Next Buzzwords, Sunday July 1st

Next Buzzwords: Sunday, 1st July at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

 Workshop 7pm run by Miki Byrne
Guest reading and open mic 8pm

Guest Poets - Miki Byrne and Nick Alexander

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Miki Byrne

 Miki has  BA Hons. Degree in Three Dimensional design and a Post Graduate degree in Education. She  is the author of poetry collections ‘Nice-bits & Hissy-fits’ and ‘Mackerel Sky’. Miki has had work included in over 120 poetry magazines and anthologies. She has won prizes for her poetry and has read on both Radio and TV and judged poetry competitions. She has had ten short stories published to date and contributes articles to magazines. She draws inspiration from past careers which include teaching, being a Jeweller, a music business manager and a percussionist. She also lived on a narrow-boat for many years. Her new collection ‘Flying Through Houses’ will be available from Indigo Dreams Press in the autumn. View Miki’s poems and stories on her website:www.mikibyrnepoetry.com

Nick Alexander

Nick is an amateur poet living in Ledbury. He has published three physical volumes of poetry; I’ve Already Spent It (2004); For Reasons of Space (2006); and Excavations of Eternity (2009), the latter being a collaboration with Ledbury artist Jeanette McCulloch, firstly as an exhibition and then as a limited edition, fully illustrated, book.He has twice had programme events in the Ledbury Poetry Festival, most recently in 2011 with The Talking Wall, a reading to accompany a series of poster poems he developed with Ledbury printer Martin Clark. He also writes songs and perform in a local band, Echo Road, and has recently branched into prose. He has published his most recent collection of poetry online through Kindle – The Talking Wall (2011) - and have added an online sampler called Almost Free (2011), which includes poetry, song lyrics and short stories, most of which have not been published elsewhere.

Nick now wishes to explore possibilities for performance, and is always looking for opportunities to collaborate.

Sunday June 10th (note change from usual date)

Next Buzzwords: Sunday, 10th June at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

 Workshop 7pm (* see below)

Guest reading and open mic 8pm

Guest Poets - Peter Wyton and Emma Purshouse

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

*N.B. if you are coming to the workshop: it will be performance based, so please bring a poem (of your own) that takes no more than 1 minute to read - or be ready to write one!

“Emma Purshouse has a sharp eye for the overlooked but poignant detail, her poetry is engaging and engaged.”

Emma Purshouse is a writer and performance poet.  She has won many poetry slams and performs at spoken word nights across the UK .  Her appearances include  The Cheltenham Literature Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival and Solfest.  She has undertaken residencies for Wolverhampton Libraries and The New Vic Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent .

Her one-woman poetry play, ‘The Professor Vyle Show’, is a fast moving theatre piece that includes puppets, poetry and quick changes.  The show has been entertaining audiences in senior schools, colleges and small theatres since 2007.   

Emma has been published in small press magazines and poetry anthologies.  A CD of her work, entitled ‘Upsetting the Applecart’, was released by Offa’s Press in 2010 (www.offaspress.co.uk).

She also MCs a regular spoken word night in the West Midlands and organises and promotes successful cabaret nights.

Peter Wyton is well known to Buzzwords regulars; he is a 'poet of page and performance' who has published a number of books and who has appeared on BBC Radio. 

He is a widely published and prize-winning poet who has appeared at venues as diverse as Cheltenham Literature Festival, Glastonbury Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Oxford TV, Lewes Prison and arts centres and theatres throughout the United Kingdom.

His work has appeared on BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please and Something Understood. He also reached the final of Radio 4's first Poetry Slam

Sunday 6th May

 Please note change of guest poet

Unfortunately, Katy Evans-Bush is unwell and can't be with us.

Jo Bell, director of national poetry day, poet, water-nomad, and all round good egg will be standing in as guest and will run the workshop.

Katy will be with us in the Autumn instead.



Next Buzzwords: Sunday, 6th May at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Writing workshop 7pm

Guest reading and open mic 8pm

Guest Poet - Katy Evans-Bush

£5 waged, £3 unwaged


Katy Evans-Bush’s poetry collections are Me and the Dead (2008) and Egg Printing Explained (2011), published by Salt, and her pamphlet Oscar & Henry (2010, Rack Press) was called ‘impressive’ in the Times Literary Supplement. Her poetry and culture blog Baroque in Hackney is currently longlisted for the George Orwell Prize for political writing. She runs a course on poetic technique at the Poetry School, and offers independent workshops, tutoring and mentoring. Her website is http://baroqueinhackney.com

Next Sunday, 1st April

Next Sunday, 1st April at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Writing workshop 7pm

Guest reading and open mic 8pm

Guest Poet - Ross Cogan who will also run the workshop


£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Ross Cogan:

I studied philosophy at university, gaining a Ph.D. from Bristol, and
currently work as a writer, researcher and editor. My first collection,
'Stalin’s Desk', was published in 2005 by Oversteps Books, while my second,
'The Book I Never Wrote', appeared in 2012 with the same publisher. I am
also currently Creative Director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

In 1999 I won an Eric Gregory Award. I have won the Exeter Poetry Prize, the
Frogmore Poetry Prize, the Staple Open Poetry Competition, and the Crabbe
Memorial Prize and have been a runner up in the Frogmore, Staple and Crabbe
Memorial Competitions, as well as the Poetry London, Cardiff International,
Ver Poets and Salisbury Kick Start Poets Competitions.

My poetry has been published in a number of magazines including PN Review,
The Rialto, Poetry London, Acumen, Stand, Orbis, New Welsh Review, The
Interpreter’s House, The Frogmore Papers, Smiths Knoll, Envoi, Staple, The
Swansea Review, Poetry Nottingham International, Oxford Poetry, Third Way,
Prop and the May Anthologies. A poem was also selected for 'Lung Jazz: Young
British Poets for Oxfam', forthcoming from Cinnamon Press.

Next Sunday, 4th March

Next Sunday, 4th March at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Writing workshop 7pm

Guest reading and open mic 8pm

Guest Poet - Elizabeth Cook, who will also run the workshop

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Elizabeth Cook's poems have appeared in magazines including Agenda, Magma, Moving Worlds, Poetry London, Stand, and The Shop. The title poem of her first collection, Bowl (Worple, 2006), was a Poem on the Underground in 2008. Her fiction Achilles (Methuen 2001) has had a performance life: it won a Fringe First at Edinburgh and has been performed at the RNT’s Cottesloe Theatre as well as at various festivals (including Cheltenham!). She wrote the libretto of Francis Grier's The Passion of Jesus of Nazareth (broadcast live on radio 3 on Good Friday 2007) and has recently collaborated with him again on a vespers setting. She is also the editor of John Keats: the Major Works (Oxford). She was brought up in Nigeria and Dorset and now lives in London, where she works in complementary medicine, and East Anglia, where she writes.

Change of Date!

Please note: the Exmouth will be closed on our usual date, 5th February, so we will be running on the following Sunday, 12th February. Everything else as advertised

Buzzwords, Sunday February 5th

Next Buzzwords: Sunday February 5th
at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

Writing workshop 7pm
Guest reading and open mic 8pm

Guest Poet - Stephen Payne, who will also run the workshop

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Stephen Payne

In 2010 Stephen was awarded the Smiths Knoll mentorship by Michael
Laskey and Joanna Cutts. His pamphlet The Probabilities of Balance
was published by Smiths Knoll at the end of that year. His poems have
been published in many magazines including Poetry Wales, The Rialto,
The North and The Dark Horse. He has been a guest poet at Mancy Poets
and Poets & Players in Manchester and reads regularly in the Bath area
and at Seren’s First Thursday event in Cardiff. Stephen was born in
Merthyr Tydfil and now lives with his family in Penarth, South
Glamorgan. He has worked as a professor in Cardiff University School
of Psychology and in Manchester Business School, and currently is
professor of human-centric systems in the Department of Computer
Science at the University of Bath.