Sunday May 1st
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Guest poets - Helen Ivory and Martin Figura
7pm workshop
8pm readings and open mic
£5 or £3 unwaged
Martin Figura work ranges from the biting humour of his Boring The Arse off Young People to the dark subject matter of his Ted Hughes Award shortlisted collection and multi-media show Whistle. He won the 2010 Hamish Canham Prize and has performed from New York to Cromer. He is an Apples & Snakes Associated Artist. His photography’s been widely published and exhibited, including at the National Portrait Gallery.
“moving, brave, unsentimental “ Jackie Kay
"Profoundly honest and at the same time joyfully entertaining" Independent on Sunday
“tender, beautiful, funny ” Chloe Garner, Director Ledbury Poetry Festival
‘the first show I ever gave a standing ovation’ Jo Bell Director, National Poetry Day
www.martinfigura.co.uk
Helen Ivory was born in Luton in 1969 and has a Degree from Norwich Art School. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 1999, and has three collections with Bloodaxe Books: The Double Life of Clocks, The Dog in the Sky, and The Breakfast Machine, and her fourth collection forthcoming next year.
She has taught creative writing for over ten years at all levels and currently runs several workshop groups where she lives in Norwich. She is married to the poet Martin Figura and they run Café Writers –a live literature organization. She is an editor for The Poetry Archive, and editor of the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears: http://ink-sweat-and-tears.blogharbor.com/.
Also a practicing artist, she regularly posts work onto her blog. Find out more here: http://www.helenivory.co.uk/”
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Sunday April 3rd
Next Buzzwords - Sunday, April 3rd
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Guest poet: Pat Borthwick
7pm: Workshop led by Pat Borthwick
8pm: Readings and open mic
£5, £3 unwaged
Pat Borthwick has published three full length poetry collections (with Littlewood Arc, Mudfog and Templar) and several pamphlets. She has won many poetry prizes including the Templar pamphlet prize in 2007 and has had her work translated into Spanish and Italian. In the last few months she was shortlisted for the Keats Shelley award and two of her poems were published in Mslexia as runners up in their poetry competition.
She is known for her sparkling readings and workshops and Billy Collins describes her work as being ‘The real business’. Simon Armitage says that ‘her poems are like maps with which you can truly find your way.’
Pat is a founder member and former chair of NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) and is one of the Poetry Society’s delegated Poets in Schools.
Her residencies have included a canal, a coalmine, Northern allotments, the Yorkshire Wolds and, for a new AONB (area of outstanding natural beauty), the Howardian Hills. In 2008 she was commissioned by the Festival of London and the Japanese Foundation to work with Japanese and English contemporary composers and produce a libretto for performers and an orchestra made up of half western and half eastern instruments.
Last year she co-ordinated the web based GPS project in East Yorkshire and more recently became the Poetry Society’s Stanza representative for rural Yorkshire.
She received an International Writers Hawthornden Award in 2003 and is currently Writer in Residence for RSPB Bempton Cliffs and poetry tutor for the Open College of the Arts.
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Guest poet: Pat Borthwick
7pm: Workshop led by Pat Borthwick
8pm: Readings and open mic
£5, £3 unwaged
Pat Borthwick has published three full length poetry collections (with Littlewood Arc, Mudfog and Templar) and several pamphlets. She has won many poetry prizes including the Templar pamphlet prize in 2007 and has had her work translated into Spanish and Italian. In the last few months she was shortlisted for the Keats Shelley award and two of her poems were published in Mslexia as runners up in their poetry competition.
She is known for her sparkling readings and workshops and Billy Collins describes her work as being ‘The real business’. Simon Armitage says that ‘her poems are like maps with which you can truly find your way.’
Pat is a founder member and former chair of NAWE (National Association of Writers in Education) and is one of the Poetry Society’s delegated Poets in Schools.
Her residencies have included a canal, a coalmine, Northern allotments, the Yorkshire Wolds and, for a new AONB (area of outstanding natural beauty), the Howardian Hills. In 2008 she was commissioned by the Festival of London and the Japanese Foundation to work with Japanese and English contemporary composers and produce a libretto for performers and an orchestra made up of half western and half eastern instruments.
Last year she co-ordinated the web based GPS project in East Yorkshire and more recently became the Poetry Society’s Stanza representative for rural Yorkshire.
She received an International Writers Hawthornden Award in 2003 and is currently Writer in Residence for RSPB Bempton Cliffs and poetry tutor for the Open College of the Arts.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Next Buzzwords
Next Buzzwords is Sunday March 6th
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Guest Poet: Myra Schneider
7pm: Workshop led by Myra Scheider
8pm: Readings and open mic
£5, £3 uwaged
Myra Schneider’s most recent poetry collections are: Insisting on Yellow: New and Selected Poems (2000), Multiplying The Moon (2004), Circling The Core (2008) – all Enitharmon Press. She has had fiction for children and teenagers published by Heineman. In 2003 Jessica Kingsley published her book Writing My Way Through Cancer, a fleshed-out journal with poems and writing suggestions. With John Killick she has written two books about personal writing. The second, Writing Your Self (Continuum 2009), is a resource book of personal writing and literature. Myra taught communication and literacy to severely disabled adults for many years. She is an experienced writing tutor and works for The Poetry School in London where she lives. She is consultant to the Second Light Network of Women Poets and has co-edited anthologies of work by contemporary women poets, most recently, Images of Women (Arrowhead Press 2006.)
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Guest Poet: Myra Schneider
7pm: Workshop led by Myra Scheider
8pm: Readings and open mic
£5, £3 uwaged
Myra Schneider’s most recent poetry collections are: Insisting on Yellow: New and Selected Poems (2000), Multiplying The Moon (2004), Circling The Core (2008) – all Enitharmon Press. She has had fiction for children and teenagers published by Heineman. In 2003 Jessica Kingsley published her book Writing My Way Through Cancer, a fleshed-out journal with poems and writing suggestions. With John Killick she has written two books about personal writing. The second, Writing Your Self (Continuum 2009), is a resource book of personal writing and literature. Myra taught communication and literacy to severely disabled adults for many years. She is an experienced writing tutor and works for The Poetry School in London where she lives. She is consultant to the Second Light Network of Women Poets and has co-edited anthologies of work by contemporary women poets, most recently, Images of Women (Arrowhead Press 2006.)
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Change of venue for February
Please note that we will be at The Brown Jug for February 6th, and back at The Exmouth after that.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Next Buzzwords
The next Buzzwords is Sunday, 6th February
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Workshop 7pm
Readings 8pm
Guest poets:
Nine Arches Press presents Luke Kennard and Matt Merritt
Luke Kennard writes poetry and short stories. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Exeter and lectures in creative writing at the University of Birmingham.
He won an Eric Gregory award in 2005 for his first collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers (Stride Books) which has since been re-issued by Salt. His second collection of poetry The Harbour Beyond the Movie was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007 making him the youngest poet ever to be nominated for the award. His third book, The Migraine Hotel, was published in by Salt in 2009 and was a critical and commercial disaster, leading Kennard to conclude that his star was decidedly sinking. His criticism has appeared in Poetry London and The Times Literary Supplement. He is currently reviewing fiction for The National.
Matt Merritt’s second collection is hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica. His debut full collection, Troy Town, was published by Arrowhead Press in 2008, and a chapbook, Making The Most Of The Light, by HappenStance in 2005. He studied history at Newcastle University and counts Anglo-Saxon and medieval Welsh poetry among his influences, as well as the likes of R.S. Thomas, Ted Hughes and John Ash. He was born in Leicester and lives nearby, works as a wildlife journalist, is an editor of Poets On Fire, and blogs at Polyolbion.
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Workshop 7pm
Readings 8pm
Guest poets:
Nine Arches Press presents Luke Kennard and Matt Merritt
Luke Kennard writes poetry and short stories. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Exeter and lectures in creative writing at the University of Birmingham.
He won an Eric Gregory award in 2005 for his first collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers (Stride Books) which has since been re-issued by Salt. His second collection of poetry The Harbour Beyond the Movie was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007 making him the youngest poet ever to be nominated for the award. His third book, The Migraine Hotel, was published in by Salt in 2009 and was a critical and commercial disaster, leading Kennard to conclude that his star was decidedly sinking. His criticism has appeared in Poetry London and The Times Literary Supplement. He is currently reviewing fiction for The National.
Matt Merritt’s second collection is hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica. His debut full collection, Troy Town, was published by Arrowhead Press in 2008, and a chapbook, Making The Most Of The Light, by HappenStance in 2005. He studied history at Newcastle University and counts Anglo-Saxon and medieval Welsh poetry among his influences, as well as the likes of R.S. Thomas, Ted Hughes and John Ash. He was born in Leicester and lives nearby, works as a wildlife journalist, is an editor of Poets On Fire, and blogs at Polyolbion.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Buzzwords, 9th January
The next Buzzwords is Sunday, 9th January
The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Guest Poet: Cliff Yates
7pm Workshop led by Cliff Yates
8pm - Guest readings and open mic
Entrance: minimum £3, £5 if you are able
Cliff Yates' latest collection of poems is ‘Frank Freeman’s Dancing School’ (Salt). His previous collections have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition and an Arts Council England Writer’s Award. During his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence he wrote 'Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School.’
“Cliff Yates is one of my favourite poets. If he was in a band that band would produce hit singles that would linger in your head for years and if he was a greengrocer his vegetables would always be startling shapes. There’s childhood here, and love, and a way of seeing the world with the wrappers off that is, ultimately, Yatesian.” Ian McMillan
"A sort of martial art: it stands there looking slight and friendly but in reality it’s using the reader’s own strength against herself till she ends up flat on the mat not knowing what’s hit her" Janet Fisher
“Jumpstart is the best aid to the teaching of poetry writing since Sandy Brownjohn’s work of the 1980s.” Gordon Wilson in The Teacher
PUBLICATIONS
'Frank Freeman’s Dancing School' (Salt Publishing, 2009)
'Emergency Rations' (poetry pamphlet: Smith/Doorstop, 2004)
'Henry's Clock' (Smith/Doorstop, 1999)
'14 Ways of Listening to the Archers' (poetry pamphlet: Smith/Doorstop 1994)
'Jumpstart Poetry In The Secondary School' (Poetry Society, 1999, 2nd ed. 2004)
'Oranges: Poems from Maharishi School' (ed) foreword by Andrew Motion (Maharishi School Press, 2001)
The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Guest Poet: Cliff Yates
7pm Workshop led by Cliff Yates
8pm - Guest readings and open mic
Entrance: minimum £3, £5 if you are able
Cliff Yates' latest collection of poems is ‘Frank Freeman’s Dancing School’ (Salt). His previous collections have won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition and an Arts Council England Writer’s Award. During his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence he wrote 'Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School.’
“Cliff Yates is one of my favourite poets. If he was in a band that band would produce hit singles that would linger in your head for years and if he was a greengrocer his vegetables would always be startling shapes. There’s childhood here, and love, and a way of seeing the world with the wrappers off that is, ultimately, Yatesian.” Ian McMillan
"A sort of martial art: it stands there looking slight and friendly but in reality it’s using the reader’s own strength against herself till she ends up flat on the mat not knowing what’s hit her" Janet Fisher
“Jumpstart is the best aid to the teaching of poetry writing since Sandy Brownjohn’s work of the 1980s.” Gordon Wilson in The Teacher
PUBLICATIONS
'Frank Freeman’s Dancing School' (Salt Publishing, 2009)
'Emergency Rations' (poetry pamphlet: Smith/Doorstop, 2004)
'Henry's Clock' (Smith/Doorstop, 1999)
'14 Ways of Listening to the Archers' (poetry pamphlet: Smith/Doorstop 1994)
'Jumpstart Poetry In The Secondary School' (Poetry Society, 1999, 2nd ed. 2004)
'Oranges: Poems from Maharishi School' (ed) foreword by Andrew Motion (Maharishi School Press, 2001)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Call for volunteers for our 2011 Poetry Competition
In 2011 Buzzwords will be holding a poetry competition in order to raise funds for the costs of running our meetings. We hold regular poetry readings/work-shopping sessions with guest poets and open mic for anyone who wants to read out a poem or two of their own.
If you wish to volunteer as part of our efforts to publicise this competition please contact the site administrator from the link on the right of this page.
If you wish to volunteer as part of our efforts to publicise this competition please contact the site administrator from the link on the right of this page.
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