Monthly Archives: October 2017
Members’ News
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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 BooksSusan 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.
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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.
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