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

Rishi Dastidar

Guest Poet: Rishi Dastidar

Rishi Dastidar's poetry has been published by the Financial Times, Tate Modern and the Southbank Centre amongst many others, and was most recently in Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014). He was longlisted in the 2016 National Poetry Competition and his debut collection Ticker-tape is published by Nine Arches Press. He is a consulting editor at The Rialto magazine, a member of Malika's Poetry Kitchen, and also serves as a trustee of Spread The Word. He tweets far too much at @BetaRish.

Susan Utting

Guest Poet: Susan Utting

Susan Utting is proud to be showcasing Half the Human Race: New & Selected Poems at Words & Ears. Previous collections include Fair's Fair and Houses Without Walls, (Two Rivers Press) and Striptease (Smith/Doorstop). Susan has won many awards, including the Peterloo Prize, The Berkshire Poetry Prize and a Poetry Business Prize for Something Small is Missing. She was selected for The Times newspaper's best love poem feature and has had work widely published, including in the TLS, The Poetry Review, The Independent, Poems on the Underground and the Daily Mirror as Carol-Ann Duffy's Laureate's Choice.
'Utting unashamedly loves language, and it seems to love her back.' Philip Gross

27th April 2017, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN

It was a packed and dynamic evening last Thursday at Words & Ears, when Susan Utting and Rishi Dastidar took up the guest poet challenge, both reading from their brand new collections, Half the Human Race and Ticker-tape. Huge thanks to them, and to guest MC Sam Loveless, who had things masterfully under control in his lovely relaxed and entertaining way. The first half was, everyone was quick to tell me in the interval, 'absolutely brilliant' (so sorry I missed that); in the second, I particularly loved hearing an example of one of Rishi's deconstructed sonnets, and can't quite forget the poem that likened having sex with him to licking stamps: posting a letter will never feel quite the same again! Susan intrigued us by opening a window in a painting and, while telling us she was 'Too Old to Die Young', seduced us all with a deliciously split apricot...

Thanks as always to those who came to read and to listen, who included Pey Oh Colborne (with a poem from her excellent series about her family - loved the rats that 'shiver through the bandaged shadows'), Sue Boyle (with a gorgeous extract from her novel-in-progress), Stephen Payne, Josephine Corcoran, Linda Saunders, Lesley Saunders, Frances-Anne King (with an intriguing poem from her sequence about the head, performed in two voices with Lesley), Rachael Clyne, Jinny Fisher, Liz Watts, Dru Marland, Ruth Sharman, John Ellison Kitching, Paul Brokensha, Luke Palmer, Hattie Parker, Francis Deas, Rosie Jackson, Brian Reid, Tom and many others...