Next Buzzwords Sunday, May 12th

Next Buzzwords Sunday, May 12th

7pm - workshop led by Kate North

8pm - open mic and guest readings

Guest Poet: Kate North

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Waged £5, unwaged £3

 

 

Kate North writes poetry and fiction and is from Cardiff.   She has previously published a novel, Eva Shell (2008), described as “forensic in its dissection of…emotional landscapes and frequently very funny with it...” Wales Arts Review, (2015).  Her first poetry collection was Bistro (2012), described as “skilful” and “particularly poignant,” in New Welsh Review, (2012), as “sparkling with energy and vitality,” in Orbis: Quarterly International Literary Journal, (2012) and as containing “beautifully compact insights and unexpected images,” in Cha: Asian Literary Journal, (2012). 

Kate is a Reader in Creative Writing and runs the MA English Literature and Creative Programmes at Cardiff Metropolitan University.  She is a regular guest critic on the BBC Radio Wales’s Review Show and she is Chair of Literature Wales.

She has just published a short story collection called Punch. Her 2018 poetry collection, The Way Out, contains poems that relate the personal, the political, the everyday and the absurd.  Zoë Brigley has described the writing as ‘muscular’ and ‘commanding’ and Philip Gross says that reading it is ‘like being outbound on a journey’.

Next Buzzwords Sunday April 7th

Next Buzzwords Sunday, April 7th

7pm - workshop led by Elizabeth Parker and Robert Walton

8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poets: Elizabeth Parker and Robert Walton

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Waged £5, unwaged £3

Elizabeth Parker grew up in a garden nursery in The Forest of Dean and now lives in Bristol. She taught secondary English in comprehensive schools for eight years and is working on two novels based on her experiences. Her poetry has been published in various journals including Magma, The Stony Thursday Book, The Interpreter’s House and Agenda. Among others, she has been shortlisted for The Bridport Poetry Prize and The Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Prize. She was a prizewinner in the 2016 Troubadour International Poetry Prize. Following her 2016 pamphlet, Antinopolis (published by Eyewear), Elizabeth’s first full collection, In Her Shambles, was published by Seren in April 2018.

“Cardiff born and Cardiff bred”, Robert Walton has lived in Bristol for many years, though the cross-Channel view from Avonmouth to South Wales constantly nourishes his hiraeth. With a PhD in Creative Writing, he is an experienced workshop tutor and teaches Creative Writing at Cardiff University. In Bristol he is a member of The Spoke poetry collective, currently working on a music & poetry project about the Severn Beach railway line.  His second collection, Sax Burglar Blues, was published by Seren in late 2017 and shortlisted by Wales Arts Review for Best of Welsh Books, 2018.  He loves music, theatre, the visual arts and cats, and has been the bane of several music teachers who have tried to help him improve his playing of the tenor saxophone.

Next Buzzwords Sunday March 10th

Next Buzzwords Sunday, March 10^th

7pm - workshop led by Lucy Anderson and/or Nigel Hutchinson

8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poets: Lucy Anderson and Nigel Hutchinson

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Waged £5, unwaged £3

Lucy Anderson studied Creative Writing at The University of Leicester. Lucy has worked collaboratively with artists and community projects, has taught poetry in the libraries, museums, in Hospital and Outreach Education, for Mind, and young writers, Writing East Midlands.

Her pamphlet Legacy (Cinnamon Press) came out in 2018. She is working on her new collection.

Born into difficulties, Lucy was an 'observer' from early on and channelled this into her psychodynamic therapy background and later in her poetry. Personal trauma and her fascination with people motivate her continued explorations of the human condition 'past to present' with themes of mental health, gender and loss. Her poems make a direct, yet tender comment on the human condition and hope to break down taboo and isolation.

Nigel Hutchinson trained in Fine Art and words were a regular part of his work. Now they’ve pretty much taken over. 

He has worked on exhibitions for the Lawrence Sterne Trust and was recently involve in curating and writing for an exhibition in response

to TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’. His work has been anthologised and appeared in various magazines, most bizarrely in a Japanese newspaper.

His collection, The Humble Family Interviews is published by Cinnamon Press.

Next Buzzwords Sunday February 10th

Next Buzzwords Sunday, February 10th

7pm - In a change from our usual writing workshop, Robin Houghton will be facilitating a discussion/ Q & A on getting your poetry out to poetry magazines. She will have her new book 'A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines' with her.

8pm - open mic and guest readings

Guest Poet: Robin Houghton

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Waged £5, unwaged £3

Robin Houghton is widely published in magazines and in numerous anthologies including The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 (Eyewear). Her pamphlet All the Relevant Gods (2018) was a winner in the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition. She was awarded the Hamish Canham Prize in 2013 and competition wins include the Stanza Competition in 2014.  Her first poetry pamphlet The Great Vowel Shift (2015) was published by Telltale Press, the poets’ publishing collective she co-founded. A former Nike marketer, for the last eighteen years Robin has worked in online communications and she's the author of a number of books on blogging and social media. Most recently she wrote 'A Guide to Getting Published in UK Poetry Magazines'. Her poetry blog is robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk

Next Buzzwords, Sunday January 6th

Next Buzzwords Sunday, January 6th

7pm - workshop led by David Calcutt
8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poet: David Calcutt

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Waged £5, unwaged £3

 

David Calcutt is a playwright, poet and novelist based in the West Midlands. He has written many plays for the theatre and for BBC Radio, several of which are frequently repeated on Radio 4 Extra. He is co-director of Regional Voice Theatre, his most recent work for the company being "The Darlaston Dog Fight", and he is also writer-in-residence for Midland Actors Theatre, for whom he has written several touring and community productions. He is the author of six books for young people, several short stories, and four collections of poetry, the most recent of which are "The Old Man in the House of Bone", for V. Press, and "The Last of the Light is not the Last of the Light" for Fair Acre Press."