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
Guest Poet: David Cooke
David Cooke was born in Wokingham in 1953, although his family comes from the West of Ireland. In 1977, while still an undergraduate at Nottingham University, he won a Gregory Award. Since then his work has appeared in many journals in the UK, Ireland and beyond: Agenda, Ambit, The Cortland Review, The Interpreter's House, The Irish Times, The London Magazine, Magma, The Manhattan Review, The Morning Star, The North, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Stand. Over the years he has published five collections of his work, the most recent of which is After Hours, published in 2017 by Cultured Llama Press. He is the founding editor of The High Window, a quarterly online journal of international poetry.
Guest Poet: Ian Royce-Chamberlain
Ian Royce-Chamberlain co-founded Poetry Teignmouth in 2013 and the town's Poetry Festival a year later. He is part of Moor Poets and the prestigious Litmus editing group. His work has appeared in anthologies including the RSPB Anthology of Wildlife Poetry, The Broadsheet, the Exeter Festival ExCite series and many others. His first collection stumble into grace (Wylde, 2012) is about to be reprinted.
The latest collection, Vertigo & Beeswax (Oversteps, 2017) summarises six eventful years of upheaval and resettling.