Dawn Gorman believes poetry should be everywhere - puts it on beermats, uses it to
work with people with memory loss, facilitates writing workshops, organises poetry
events and runs international poetry competitions. She is widely published, and has
performed in New York, Paris, London - and lots of smaller places in between.

“Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket;
you put your life into it and make something out of that.” Mary Oliver

Philip Gross

Guest Poet: Philip Gross

Philip Gross has published some twenty collections of poetry, most recently A Bright Acoustic (Bloodaxe, 2017). He received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. The Water Table won the T.S.Eliot Prize 2009, and Love Songs of Carbon the Roland Mathias Award (Wales Book of The Year) 2016. He is a keen collaborator across artforms, eg with artist Valerie Coffin Price on A Fold In The River (Seren, 2015). A new science-based collection for young people, Dark Sky Park came from Otter-Barry Books in July 2018. www.philipgross.co.uk

Lesley Saunders

Guest Poet: Lesley Saunders

Lesley Saunders is a poet whose work has won several awards, including the inaugural Manchester Poetry Prize. Her recent book Angels on Horseback, was one of the winners of the Poetry Business Pamphlet awards in 2017. Her latest book is Nominy-Dominy from Two Rivers Press. She too enjoys collaborations with other poets, artists and dancers. lesley574@btinternet.com

28th March 2019, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN

"If someone walked in on the middle of this evening, they would say 'that's a cunningly-scripted anthology by everyone in the room' - if we'd tried to make it so perfect, I think we might have failed." What a spot-on summing-up of last night's Words & Ears by one of our two guest poets, Philip Gross - Lesley Saunders' request that we all came prepared with open-mic poems on belonging or exile, in keeping with the theme of the poets' collaborative book, A Part of the Main, was perhaps not recalled by everyone, but my goodness what a wonderfully cohesive evening it proved to be anyway - and the standard of the open mic was, as Lesley said, 'better than anywhere' she could think of. Well done everyone - Eileen Cameron, Rose Flint, Andy Fawthrop, Stephen Boyce, Pey Oh, Peter O'Grady, John Powell, Paul Brokensha, Deborah Harvey, Mark Sayers, Linda Saunders, Peter Iveson, John Waite, Dominic Fisher, Maggie Reed, Sarah Watkinson, Martin Reed - and, of course, Philip and Lesley, whose first sets dipped into their own work before their second gave us a irresistibly sparky, fun and thought-provoking slice of their new book, which I hugely recommend to you. And by the way, guest-poets-to-come: Lesley wrote a poem especially for Words & Ears... just saying :).