Monthly Archives: October 2017

Members’ News

Members readings and launches 
 
We have an extremely talented membership, so several members have launches and readings in the next few weeks to which you are welcome.  Coming up in November are:
 
Saturday November 4th – Against the Grain Launch, Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9BX
A new press set up by Abegail Morley, Jess Mookherjee and Karen Dennison has its launch, with reading from its first pamphlet by Anna Kisby, and additional readings by Sarah James, Sean Magnus Martin and Jane Lovell.  
 
Thursday 9th November – Louisa Campbell’s new pamphlet, Happy Bus, launching at the Javabean Cafe at 8pm which also features readings by Ira Lightman and John McCullough
 
Tuesday 14th November – Caroline Price’s new collection is being launched by Shoestring Press at 8pm at Tonbridge Old Fire Station, TN9 1BH, also featuring readings by Hubert Moore and Mary Gurr.
 
Thursday 16th November – Steve Walter’s London launch of When the Change Came, which will be 8pm at the Poetry Cafe (as above), with music by Steve Antioni and more poetry by John Paul O’Neil.
 
Wednesday 29th November – Abegail Morley’s launch of her new collection In the Curator’s Hands, 7:30pm at the Vittle & Swig, with additional readings by Sara Barnsley and Jill Munro.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Susan Utting


We have another enjoyable evening in store for you in Tunbridge Wells on November 21st. 2017, when Susan Utting is our guest.
Susan Utting is an accomplished poet whose latest collection, Half the Human Race, came out in March 2017.  Work from her earlier collection, Houses Without Walls, (Two Rivers Press) was featured in the Independent on Sunday, was widely and warmly reviewed, with a poem included in the best single poem category of the Forward Book of Poetry.
 
Her work has won many awards. In 2015,  Self-Portrait as a Ticked Box won 2nd Prize in the McLellan Poetry Competition. Other prizes include a Poetry Business Prize for the pamphlet Something Small is Missing and the Peterloo Poetry Prize for Under the Blue Ball. She was selected for The Times newspaper’s best love poem prize 2010 and has twice been shortlisted for the Arvon Poetry Prize. Susan’s work has also appeared in The TLS, The Independent, New Welsh Review, The Mirror, The Forward Book of Poetry, The North, The Interpreter’s House and The Poetry Review. Her first full collection, Striptease, was published in 2001 by Smith/Doorstop Books   

Susan runs poetry workshops country wide and taught poetry & creative writing at Reading University for 17 years. She was appointed Community Laureate for Southern Arts’ Year of the Artist and received a Creative Writing Fellowship from Reading University’s School of English & American Literature.

Her work was selected by The Poetry Library to be recorded for Poetry International at the South Bank Centre in London, and was broadcast along with other international poets’ work, at the Royal Festival Hall and South Bank Centre.

Please do come and bring friends/guests to the Vittle & Swig, Camden Road, for a prompt 8pm start.  There will be an Open Mic session at the start of the evening, so bring a poem with you too.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

October Treat – Martin Figura

                 

Martin Figura was born in Liverpool and lives in Norwich.  He is a poet, teacher, retired army major, qualified accountant (winner of the 1976 RAPC Apprentice College Accounting Prize), Randy Newman fan and photographer; but mostly a poet.  He is married to the poet and artist Helen Ivory.  His collections include:  The Little Book of Harm (Firewater Press 2000) and Whistle (Arrowhead 2010) which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry in 2010.  His poem Victor won the Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize that same year.  In 2013 Nasty Little Press published his pamphlet Arthur.

He produced two new books last year:  Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine with Cinnamon Press and Shed with Gatehouse Press and is touring this year with his performances of Dr. Zeeman, the show.  His work has been described  as “profoundly honest and at the same time joyfully entertaining” by the Independent on Sunday.

Martin is chair of Café Writers, Norwich.

Come along to the Vittle and Swig restaurant in Camden Road for another feast of poetry – 7.45 for 8.00pm.


Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized