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: Alyson Hallett
Alyson Hallett is a prize-winning poet and Hawthornden Fellow. Besides publishing six books and pamphlets of poetry, she has also written drama and an audio-diary for BBC Radio 4; an essay on Chalk for BBC Radio 3; drama for Sky Television and a book of short stories. Alyson was the first poet to be in residence in the Charles Causley house and also the first resident poet in a university Geography Department with a Leverhulme Fellowship. Alyson collaborates with artists, musicians and sculptors, and for the past 17 years has curated a poetry as public art project: The Migration Habits of Stones. Before writing full time, Alyson worked as a cleaner; postwoman; housekeeper on the Isle of Iona; mental health worker for MIND and the Richmond Fellowship. Her latest publication is a pamphlet of poems, Toots (Mariscat Press), recommended by Jackie Kay as one of her summer reads in the Sunday Observer.
Guest Poet: Penelope Shuttle
Penelope Shuttle's latest publication is Four Poems from Lyonesse (Stickleback). Her full-length collection Lyonesse will appear from Bloodaxe Books in Spring 2021. Shuttle is President of The Falmouth Poetry Group and a Trustee for The Causley Trust. Lzrd: poems from the Lizard Peninsula (in collaboration with Alyson Hallett) was published by IDP in October 2018. Will You Walk A Little Faster? (Bloodaxe Books) was Poetry Book of the Month in The Observer, July 2017.