Next Buzzwords Sunday October 1st

Next Buzzwords Sunday October 1st

7pm - workshop with Kim Moore
 8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poet: Kim Moore

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Waged £5, unwaged £3



Kim Moore's first collection The Art of Falling was published by Seren in 2015 and a poem from the collection was shortlisted for The Forward Prize.  Her first pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition.  She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2010 and a Northern Writers Award in 2014.  She is currently a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Next Buzzwords Sunday September 3rd

Sunday September 3rd

7pm - workshop Tania Hershman and Rishi Dastidar
 8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poets: Tania Hershman and Rishi Dastidar

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Waged £5, unwaged £3


Rishi Dastidar is a fellow of The Complete Works, a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine, a member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective, and also serves as a chair of the writer development organization Spread The Word. His debut collection Ticker-tape is published by Nine Arches Press.

In 2017, Nine Arches Press published Tania Hershman's debut poetry collection, and her third short story collection, Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, was published by Unthank Books. Tania is also the author of a poetry chapbook, and two short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers' & Artists' Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). Tania is curator of ShortStops (www.shortstops.info), celebrating short story activity across the UK & Ireland and is completing a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. www.taniahershman.com

Next Buzzwords Sunday, 16th July

 Sunday July 16th

7pm - workshop led by Anna Saunders
 8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poets: John Row and Anna Saunders

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Waged £5, unwaged £3



John Row, poet and storyteller has been performing since the 1970’s when he toured with Nick Toczek’s Stereo Graffiti, poetry and music show. Since then he has toured both as a solo artist and with a variety of musicians from different genres appearing on four continents and has been a regular guest at the Austn International Poetry Festival as well as music festivals throughoutEngland. He has been writer in residence at four different prisons and has visited over thirty prisons and young offender establishments. His work is a mixture of the political and personal. He published latest chap book ‘ImpureTheatre’ earlier this year. www.johnrow.com

Anna Saunders is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press), Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox (Indigo Dreams) and the forthcoming Ghosting for Beginners. ( Indigo Dreams March 2018).

She has been described as ‘A poet of quite remarkable gifts’ by Bernard O’Dongohue and as ‘a poet who surely can who can do anything' in The North. Tears in the Fence said of her ‘Anna Saunders’ poetry is reminiscent of Plath – with all its alpha achievement and radiance’.

Anna holds a Masters in Creative and Critical Writing from The University of Gloucestershire and is the CEO and founder of Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

Next Buzzwords Sunday 4th June

Next Buzzwords Sunday 4th June

7pm - workshop
 8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poets: James Sheard and Deborah Alma

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Waged £5, unwaged £3

James Sheard is the author of Hotel Mastbosch (2003), Scattering Eva (2005), Dammtor (2010) and The Abandoned Settlements (2017). When away from his writing desk, he assists Emergency Poet Deborah Alma as poetic medic, ambulance driver and dispenser of poemcetamols. Jim’s work has received the Ictus Prize and been named Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice as well as Poetry Book Society Recommendation. It has also been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Glen Dimplex Award for Poetry. He is currently in his 11th year of teaching at Keele University.

Deborah Alma has an MA in Creative Writing, taught Writing Poetry at Worcester University and works with people with dementia and in hospice care. She is also Emergency Poet prescribing poetry from her vintage ambulance. She is editor of Emergency Poet-an anti-stress poetry anthology, The Everyday Poet- Poems to live by ( both published by Michael O’Mara), and her True Tales of the Countryside is published by The Emma Press. Her first full collection will be published by Nine Arches Press in April 2018. She lives with her partner the poet James Sheard on a hillside in Powys, Wales.

Next Buzzwords Sunday 30th April

Next Buzzwords Sunday 30th April

7pm - workshop lead by Angela France
8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poet: Jennifer A McGowan

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Waged £5, unwaged £3

Jennifer A. McGowan obtained her MA and PhD from the University of Wales.

Despite being certified as disabled at age 16 with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, she has

persevered and has published poetry and prose in many magazines and anthologies on

both sides of the Atlantic, including Pank and The Rialto. She won the Geoff Stevens

Memorial Prize 2014, which led to her first full collection, The Weight of Coming

Home, being published by Indigo Dreams. She has also been commended in the

YorkMix poetry competition and Highly Commended in the prestigious Torbay Poetry

Competition and the Manchester Cathedral Poetry Competition amongst others. Life

in Captivity and Sounding, her pamphlets, are available through Finishing Line Press.

Her website, with more poetry and examples of her mediaeval calligraphy, can be

found at http://www.jenniferamcgowan.com

Next Buzzwords Sunday 2nd April

Next Buzzwords Sunday April 2nd

7pm - workshop lead by Dawn Gorman and Rosie Jackson
8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poets: Dawn Gorman and Rosie Jackson

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Waged £5, unwaged £3

Dawn Gorman is a freelance editor and arts events organiser. Her pamphlet This Meeting of Tracks was published in the Pushcart Prize-nominated four-poet book Mend & Hone (Toadlily Press, 2013). Her work has appeared in literary journals such as The Rialto, Iota and The Interpreter’s House, and in anthologies including DE4 | A1 (Templar Poetry, 2016), Salt on the Wind (elephantsfootprint, 2015) and The Book of Love & Loss (Belgrave Press, 2014). In 2015, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, together with 250 schoolchildren, wrote a symphony based on her poem Replenishment; a film poem devised as the overture appeared at Cannes Short Film Festival that year. For the past two years she has worked as a poet in residence at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She works with poetry with adults and children in community settings and runs a monthly reading series, Words & Ears, in Bradford on Avon. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath  

Rosie Jackson lives in Frome and runs creative writing workshops. Her poetry pamphlet What the Ground Holds (Poetry Salzburg, 2014) was followed by her first collection The Light Box (Cultured Llama, 2016) and her memoir The Glass Mother  (Unthank, 2016). Her poetry has been published in Acumen, Ambit, Frogmore Papers, Tears in the Fence and other journals and anthologies, set for GCSE, and used for a large copper sculpture in the grounds of a Dorchester hospital. She won joint    first prize in the Bath Poetry Competition 2015, Second Prize in Battered Moons 2015, 1st and 2nd    prizes in the Berkshire Festival in both 2016 and 2017. She is a Hawthornden fellow 2017 and has taught in many educational and community venues including the University of East Anglia, Bethesda Writers’ Centre Washington DC, Skyros Writers’ Lab and the Open College of the Arts. Her books of prose include Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, Frieda Lawrence, Mothers Who Leave and she    has won awards for her short stories. www.rosiejackson.org.uk

Next Buzzwords Sunday 5th March

Next Buzzwords Sunday 5th March

7pm - workshop lead by Maggie Butt
8pm - open mic and guest readings
Guest Poet: Maggie Butt

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham
Waged £5, unwaged £3

Maggie Butt is an ex-journalist and BBC TV producer, turned poet and novelist. Her

poetry collection Degrees of Twilight (The London Magazine, 2015) follows the

illustrated, themed books Sancti Clandestini – Undercover Saints and Ally Pally

Prison Camp, her book of pocket-sized poems petite and her first collection Lipstick.

She is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent and an Associate

Professor at Middlesex University where she’s taught creative writing since 1990.

Her poems have escaped the page into festivals, choreography, a geo-locative mobile

phone app, live musical accompaniment, and her website: www.maggiebutt.co.uk,

which includes videos and recordings