Next Buzzwords - Sunday, November 3rd

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, November 3rd
 
Workshop, led by Bobby Parker 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Bobby Parker

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged



BOBBY PARKER was born in 1982 in Kidderminster, England. He writes a column for popular on-line magazine The Quietus, and his poetry has been widely published. Publications include the critically acclaimed experimental poetry/art books 'Ghost Town Music' and its sequel 'Comberton' (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press). He is currently trying to find a home for 'Blue Movie', his first full-length collection of published poems, and something he considers to be his life's work.

''I love Bobby Parker's writing. Ghost Town Music was one of my favourite things of last year... an endlessly engaging mix-up of artifice, diary, fury, confessional, surrealism/cubism, art and photography. The post-it notes in Comberton are brilliantly funny, thought-provoking and sad ("WE WALKED AROUND AT NIGHT IN THE SUMMER LISTENING FOR COUPLES HAVING SEX WITH THEIR WINDOWS OPEN"), giving it something in common with the first. But it goes further. It's a collection of poems whose narrative outstrips most novels for depth, mystery and staying power.'' - Luke Kennard 

Next Buzzwords Sunday, October 6th

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, October 6th
 
Workshop, led by Julia Deakin 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Julia Deakin

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

JULIA DEAKIN was born in Nuneaton and worked her way north via the Potteries, Manchester and York to Huddersfield. Widely published, she has read twice on Poetry Please and won several competitions. 

 

‘Crafted, tender poems, written with passion and purpose,’ said Simon Armitage of her first collection, Without a Dog (Graft, 2008). Anne Stevenson ‘read it straight through at a single sitting’ enjoying its ‘mature wit and wisdom’. ‘Real linguistic inventiveness’ said Ian McMillan. ‘Bold, irreverent and wickedly funny,’ said Alison Brackenbury of her Poetry Business Competition winner, The Half-Mile-High-Club.

 

Michael Symmons Roberts describes her second book, Eleven Wonders (Graft 2012) as ‘powerful, assured, elegant. Her formal skill and inventiveness make this a rich and eclectic collection. Those who, like me, have admired her individual poems in the past, will be struck by their cumulative strength and range, and this book deserves to win her many new readers.’

 

Julia lives near Huddersfield and teaches at the University of Bradford.

More details at www.juliadeakin.co.uk

Next Buzzwords Sunday September 1st

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, September 1st
 
Workshop, led by Penelope Shuttle 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Penelope Shuttle


Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Penelope Shuttle has lived in Cornwall since 1970.  She is the widow of the poet Peter Redgrove (1932-2003).

UNSENT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS 1980 – 2013, Bloodaxe Books, appeared in October 2012.

SANDGRAIN AND HOURGLASS, Bloodaxe Books, was published in October 2010, and was a Recommendation of The Poetry Book Society, and a poetry book of the year in The Financial Times.

In 2007 Shuttle was awarded a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry.

Her 2006 collection, REDGROVE’S WIFE, ( Bloodaxe Books)  was short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best Single Collection, and for the T S Eliot Award.

She gives numerous readings in the UK and overseas.

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday 7th July

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 7th July

Workshop, led by Philip Rush 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poets: Philip Rush and David Clarke

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Philip Rush lives in Stroud. He took a a degree in English at the University of London and another in drama at the University of Bristol and now works as a headteacher. His poetry has been widely published in journals such as Smiths Knoll, The North and The Rialto, and he has had poems published in the USA. He was in Carcanet's 'New Poetries IV'. Garlic Press published a pamphlet, 'Catching my Own Drift', in January 2012. He has a selection of short pamphlets from Yew Tree Press.

David Clarke was born in Lincolnshire and lives in Gloucestershire. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several magazines, both in print and online, including Iota, Under the Radar, South Bank Poetry and New Walk. His pamphlet Gaud was one of the winners of the Flarestack Poets pamphlet competition in 2012. He blogs at http://athingforpoetry.blogspot.co.uk 

Next Buzzwords, Sunday 2nd June

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 2nd June

Workshop, led by Matthew Stewart 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Matthew Stewart
 
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged


Matthew Stewart lives between Extremadura, Spain, and West Sussex, England. He took a degree in Modern Languages at St Peter's College, Oxford, and now works in the Spanish wine trade. His poetry has been widely published in journals such as London Magazine and The Rialto, etc, and he blogs at http://roguestrands.blogspot.com. Happenstance Press published his first pamphlet collection, Inventing Truth, in April 2011, followed by a second chapbook, Tasting Notes, in September 2012

Next Buzzwords Sunday 5th May

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 5th May

Workshop, led by Angela France 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guests: Alison Brackenbury and Steve Ashley
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

The poet Alison Brackenbury and the singer-songwriter Steve Ashley will be bringing a carefully chosen selection of words and music to Buzzwords, with linked poems and songs alternating in each half of their programme.

Alison will be reading poems from her thirty years of published work, including poems entirely new to Buzzwords, and samples from her new collection, Then.  The Guardian recently included a poem from Then in its Saturday Review, which can be read online at

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/20/great-great-by-alison-brackenbury

Steve Ashley has been described as ‘one of the country’s finest songwriters’. His much-loved work can be heard regularly on BBC Radio.  Steve will be singing classics from his award-winning back catalogue, together with new, thought-provoking songs. Details of Steve’s illustrious 40 year musical career, and his CDs, can be found at his website:

www.steveashley.co.uk

The evening will be a marvellous taster for Steve’s full-scale solo concert in Cheltenham Town Hall, on Thursday 26 September, 2013.

http://www.cheltenhamtownhall.org.uk/item/events/2013/cbc/music/steve-ashley/31188/

And, finally, Alison would like to mention that, if anyone would like to buy her new collection at Buzzwords, they will be rewarded for their loyalty by a bargain price of £6.50 – a third off the bookshop price, (and £2.46 cheaper than Amazon!)

 This is a never-to-be-repeated performance! An evening of fantastic music, and of new poems, at a bargain price!

Next Buzzwords Sunday 7th April

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 7th April

Workshop, led by Chrissie Gittins 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Chrissie Gittins

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

CHRISSIE GITTINS was born in Lancashire and lives in London. Her poems have won prizes and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her first adult poetry collection Armature (Arc, 2003) appeared to critical acclaim: ‘Gittins’s deadpan tone and skewed perspective mark her out as a true original. – she has a genuine gift'. Jane Yeh, Poetry Review. Her second adult collection is I’ll Dress One Night As You (Salt, 2009).‘Her appealing poems reconnect a child’s wide-awake senses with an adult’s intelligence and passion.’ Alison Brackenbury, Poetry Review

Her three children’s poetry collections are all PBS Choices for the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf and two were shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award. In 2012 Chrissie made a recording of her children’s poetry for the Poetry Archive. Her ‘New and Collected’ children’s poems ‘Stars in Jars’ will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2014.

Chrissie’s short story collection is Family Connections (Salt, 2007); ‘most of them carry an insidiously discomforting charge’, Nicholas Clee, The Guardian. Her plays for BBCR4 include Starved for Love (starring Patricia Routledge), Life Assurance (starring Sorcha Cusack), and Dinner in the Iguanodon.

Chrissie is a Hawthornden Fellow; she has received two Arts Council Grants for the Arts, and awards from the Royal Literary Fund and the Author’s Foundation. In 2009 she was included in the British Council Contemporary Writers directory of the UK and Commonwealth’s 'most important writers'. Chrissie was resident writer on Shetland in September 2010, and in January 2010 she was appointed first honorary Writer-in-Residence in Lewisham.

www.chrissie.gittins.co.uk