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

Tony Curtis

Guest Poet: Tony Curtis

In 2018 the poet Tony Curtis is touring his readings/talks to commemorate the 1918/2018 war commemorations.
He will be reading poems from his latest book From the Fortunate Isles: New & Selected Poems (Seren, 2016). Tony is an award-winning poet, Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of South Wales and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature. He has been writing and publishing for more than 50 years and has many works which engage with the world at war.

Cora Greenhill

Guest Poet: Cora Greenhill

Cora Greenhill has three recent collections, The Point of Waking (Oversteps Books 2013), Far from Kind (Pindrop Press, 2016), and her epic poem, Artemis, The People's Priestess (Three Drops Press, 2017). Her work has appeared widely eg in The North, The Interpreter's House, Magma, Tears in the Fence, Orbis, MsLexia etc. She hosts Sheffield's Writers in The Bath, and lives in The Peak District and Crete. She taught Gabrielle Roth's 5 Rhythm dancework for over 20 years, and her poetry is full of the rhythms and metaphors of dance and the earth.

26th April 2018, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN

Thank you to everyone who took part in the Words & Ears fest last week! On Thursday in Bradford on Avon, Cora Greenhill's gorgeously sensual poetry took us on our travels, from South Africa in the company of a green mamba, to 'pock-marked college walls' in Nigeria, to Crete, where we met Artemis and her delinquent brother Apollo. Fellow guest poet Tony Curtis's work wound around Wales, with a considered look at Valley funerals and, most powerfully, at the Aberfan disaster, 'the distant howls of men'. Cora was our guest poet the following night, too, this time at Valentine Clays in Stoke-on-Trent, where there were some powerful synchronicities between her work and that of sculptor Liz Watts, whose installation Beached provided our gorgeous backdrop for the evening. Thanks to everyone who took part in both events - Rosie Jackson, Rose Flint, Mark Sayers, Dru Marland, Paul Brokensha, Rachael Clyne, John Hawkhead, Brian Reid, Michelle Diaz, Peter O'Grady, Tom Forrest, Nigel Guy, John Powell, B Anne Adriaens, Verona Bass, Linda Perry, Lynn Tammadge, June Palmer and Mel Wardle Woodend.