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

Past Events

7th November 2019

Lyrical

7th November 2019, 6:00pm - 7:30pm, Town Hall Arts, Market St, Trowbridge BA14 8EQ

Lovely to be returning to Trowbridge, where I lived for 22 years, to perform at Diana Durham's event, Lyrical. I'll be reading from my new pamphlet, Instead, Let Us Say, (Dempsey & Windle, 2019), which looks with empathy and hope at everything from the plight of the natural world to personal loss, and offers a message of hope for dark times. Join me to reflect on how we might all perceive things differently - as always at Diana's event, audience comment, discussion and participation (your own poems, or those by other people) are actively encouraged!

Praise for Instead, Let Us Say:
"Down to earth, tender and compassionate, these are resilient poems 'loud with life', grounded in working-class roots, with a delicious alertness to sensual detail. Equally remarkable is their unabashed metaphysics, celebrating the hidden realities of love and unity of all life. On Hearing Alice Oswald Read Memorial is sheer genius."
Rosie Jackson

"This is a sensual, tender-hearted poetry, aglow with its own humanity. There is, throughout, an intensely felt oneness with the natural world, rendered by a true poet in possession of impressive technical gifts. A very fine collection that rewards our attention."
Martin Malone

"This pamphlet - Dawn Gorman's third - is a treasure-trove of moments caught in passing and held up to the light of the poet's imagination. Her work shows us how the central paradox of poetry is accomplished: how words can preserve fleeting impressions, stay the ephemeral, capture the intangible: 'Time's mouth is hungry, wide, / and one thing pulls in the next'. There is emotional depth here too; at the heart of the book is a group of poems tracing the arc of a love affair in images that are rooted in particular times and places yet reach out beyond the purely personal. That sense of connectedness with other lives is vividly enacted in other poems like Clout and Maiden Stakes where the poet evokes raw and brutal incidents with tender eloquence."
Lesley Saunders