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

Angela France

Guest Poet: Angela France

Angela France has had poems published in many of the leading journals and has been anthologised a number of times. Her publications include Occupation (Ragged Raven Press, 2009), Lessons in Mallemaroking (Nine Arches Press, 2011), Hide (Nine Arches Press 2013) and The Hill (Nine Arches Press 2017). She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing and a PhD from the University of Gloucestershire. Angela teaches creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire and in various community settings. She runs a reading series in Cheltenham, 'Buzzwords'.

Roy Marshall

Guest Poet: Roy Marshall

Roy Marshall has been employed, at different times, as an electronics buyer, delivery driver, gardener and coronary care nurse. His pamphlet Gopagilla was published in 2012, and The Sun Bathers (Shoestring Press, 2013) was short-listed for the Michael Murphy award for best first collection. His poems have won awards and appeared in many publications in the UK and Ireland, and in hospital waiting rooms in New Zealand. Roy lives in Leicestershire and currently works in adult education. A new collection of poems is due in 2017. Roy writes about writing at https://roymarshall.wordpress.com/

3rd January 2017, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN

Great to hear new voices at Words & Ears last Tuesday night, making for a rich and varied open mic as always, with topics ranging from absent mindedness to refugees. And it was particularly good to hear delicious sets from guest poets Angela France and Roy Marshall. I'd only heard Angela read the odd poem here and there before, so it was a real treat to sit back and listen both to poems from existing publications and to work in progress. I think we all warmed to the idea of those real stories, with, as she put it, the kind of blood and guts necessary to get to grips with life - the bloody smear on the crystal slipper - but I also loved the gentler poems about her grandparents, her grandfather who 'counts out seeds in threes'. And I know I wasn't alone in my pleasure at hearing some of Angela's poems from her collection due out in July, based on her own, intimate relationship with Leckhampton Hill near Cheltenham, blended with the landmark's own history. And most memorable of all, her work in 'Anglish' ('English with the Latin taken out') which is remarkably effective in connecting us back with the basic essence of England's past. It was wonderful to finally welcome Roy Marshall to the Swan, he being one of the runners up in our Poems-on-a-Beermat competition a few years ago. His set was moving and thought provoking, in particular his poems based on his work in coronary care where, 'in the hospital's concrete heart', we saw 'all our futures' in vignette after compassionate vignette. Especially strong was the sense of helplessness of the health care professionals in the face of strangers' grief - it's good to know that some of this this will be in Roy's new book, out in March.