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

Stephen Boyce

Guest Poet: Stephen Boyce

Stephen Boyce works as an adviser to heritage and arts bodies. A prize-winning and widely published poet, he is the author of three poetry collections, The Blue Tree (Indigo Dreams 2019), The Sisyphus Dog (Worple 2014), and Desire Lines (Arrowhead 2010). He has also published two pamphlet collections - and a needle case of poems. Stephen is a co-founder and the current chair of Winchester Poetry Festival and lives in north Dorset.

Dawn Gorman

Guest Poet: Dawn Gorman

Dawn Gorman devises and runs community arts events, including the poetry reading series Words & Ears in Bradford on Avon, and works with poetry with the elderly and young people. She is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her second pamphlet, This Meeting of Tracks, was published in New York in the four-poet book Mend & Hone, which was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her third, Instead, Let Us Say, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize, and will be published by Dempsey & Windle in September 2019.

27th February 2020, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to Words & Ears this month - what a treat it was to have the luxury of being a reader, while Rosie Jackson did such a splendid job MC-ing. I was particularly struck by how attentive an audience Words & Ears folk are - thank you so much for your support and your great open mic poems, and thank you to Stephen Boyce for his readings, which I thought were excellent. Here is Rosie's review of the evening - thank you for this too, Rosie.
"With the world facing dark places right now, any poetry worth its salt will both face them head on and try to transform or lift them into light. Last night's Words and Ears did just that, naming the threats to life, how birds can be 'flipped back to a handful of nothing', how icebergs need a requiem, how there's 'a lump in the throat of the day', how 'this year needs us more than ever' and yet finding redemption through empathy for all forms of life. Guests Dawn Gorman - delivering 'a light for the dark of it' - and excellent craftsman Stephen Boyce - 'I count myself well versed in trees', set the tone, moving and warm, with poem after poem celebrating larch, tulip tree, sycamore, cherry, and the evening had plenty of birds too, especially great egrets. I dropped deeper into my heart listening to them both, and to the wonderful open mic-ers: Rachael Clyne, June Hall, Liz Watts, Heidi Beck (with an audacious fully rhyming poem!), Chris MacFarlane, Kate Escher, Stephen Payne (with a literal carousel of Extinct and Endangered Species in Paris), Anne Gregson, Peter Peter O'Grady, Eileen Cameron, John Powell and John Skreen, whose line 'Who'll find the right words to warm the heart?' was loudly answered by every poet present. It was a special treat to have Dawn, usually the host, reading her poems from Instead, Let us Say. She shared that Wendy Klein's review in High Window notes that 'this poet can make a graveyard erotic'. And she did, she did."