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

 

Next Buzzwords Sunday, 3rd March

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 3rd March

Workshop, led by Sue Rose 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Sue Rose
 
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Sue Rose works as a literary translator and has published various novels, libretti and plays in translation. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies and she has been commended or placed in competitions such as the National Poetry Competition, the Peterloo and the Wigtown. She won the Troubadour Poetry Prize in 2009 and the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Competition in 2008. She is also a founder member of Scatterlings, a group formed to give readings in the Southeast and beyond. Her debut full-length collection, From the Dark Room, was published by Cinnamon Press in 2011, and a chapbook, Archives du Coeur, is forthcoming from Hercules Editions in late 2013.

Next Buzzwords: Sunday January 27th

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 27th January

Workshop, led by Peter Robinson 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Peter Robinson
 
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged




PETER ROBINSON (b. Salford, Lancashire, in 1953) has published many books of poetry, translations, aphorisms, prose poems, and literary criticism. He has been awarded the Cheltenham Prize, the John Florio Prize, and two Poetry Book Society Recommendations. His most recent and forthcoming titles include a collection of poems, The Returning Sky (Shearsman Books, 2012) and Foreigners, Drunks and Babies: Eleven Stories (Two Rivers Press, 2013). As well as poetry editor for Two Rivers Press, he is Head of Department and Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Reading.

Next Buzzwords Sunday January 6th

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 6th January

Workshop, led by Anne-Marie Fyfe 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Anne-Marie Fyfe
 
Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged

Anne-Marie Fyfe (b. Cushendall, Co. Antrim) has four collections of poetry including Understudies: New and Selected Poems (Seren Books, 2010); has won the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Prize; has run Coffee-House Poetry’s readings and workshops at London’s Troubadour since 1997, organises the annual Hewitt Spring Festival in the Glens of Antrim, and was chair of the Poetry Society from 2006-2009.

 

Next Buzzwords: Sunday 2nd December

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 2nd December

Workshop, led by Kate North 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Kate North

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged



  *Please note* as usual, for our last event of the year, if anyone would like to read favourite published poems on the open mic, instead of their own, it would be welcomed.


Kate North writes poetry and fiction.  Her poetry collection is called Bistro.  Her novel, Eva Shell, was published in 2008.  She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a PhD in Creative and Critical writing from Cardiff University.  She teaches at Cardiff Metropolitan University and lives in Cardiff.
 

Next Buzzwords Sunday, 4th November

Next Buzzwords - Sunday, 4th November

Workshop, led by Dan Sluman 7pm

Guest readings and open mic 8pm

Guest poet: Dan Sluman

Upstairs at The Exmouth Arms, Bath Road, Cheltenham

£5 waged, £3 unwaged
 

Daniel Sluman is a 25 year old poet based in Gloucestershire. His poems have appeared widely in journals such as Cadaverine, Popshot, Shit Creek Review, & Orbis. He is on the editorial board for Iota. His debut full-length collection, Absence has a Weight of its Own, is out now, and published by Nine Arches Press.'