Zelda Chappel

Guest Poet: Zelda Chappel

Zelda Chappel is a poet, editor and artist. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies, both online and in print. Her debut collection, The Girl in the Dog-tooth Coat, was published by Bare Fiction in July 2015. She is the co-curator and editor of the multi-arts journal Elbow Room and independent micro-publisher As Yet Untitled, publishing books by artists and writers but not quite as you know them.

Peter Robinson

Guest Poet: Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson is the author of aphorisms, prose poems, stories, and much literary criticism, as well as numerous volumes of poetry and translation for which he has been awarded the Cheltenham Prize, the John Florio Prize, and two Poetry Books Society Recommendations. Holland House brought out his novel, September in the Rain, in autumn 2016, and Shearsman Books published his Collected Poems 1976-2016 in February 2017. His new critical volume, The Sound Sense of Poetry, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. He is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Reading and the poetry editor for Two Rivers Press.

28th September 2017, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN

By our September guest MC, Stephen Payne

A pleasure to be a guest host at last night's Words & Ears in the Swan Hotel Bradford on Avon, and to support the absent Dawn Gorman, who provides such a wonderful service for local poetry.

The guest readings were excellent. That "shite" became one of the words-of-the-night is only testimony to the good-humour, and I guess political leanings, widely shared. Zelda Chappel's lyrical poems gave new meaning to the phrase "bird's eye view" and offered strangely hopeful perspectives on loss and grief. Peter Robinson's poems revealed him to be exceptionally well travelled both physically and intellectually: his new poems were a powerful elegy for Europe, and one of his earlier poems certainly touched my own experiences with its mention of the Open Day as a metaphor for the kind of post-modern dystopia we seem to be building (I think this was the point in the evening where "shite" entered the discourse).

Open mic contributions were splendid as ever, from Chaucer Cameron, Deborah Harvey, Dru Marland, Peter O'Grady, Ruth Sharman, Mark Sayers and others. I was only sorry that in my own reading of In My Craft or Sullen Art I demonstrated how readily "Not for the proud man apart/ from the raging moon" can transform into "Not for the proud moon apart/ from the raging man". But don't worry, Dylan, I caught myself almost in time.

Thanks again to Zelda and Peter, lovely to meet you and to hear you.