27th April 2017, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN
It was a packed and dynamic evening last Thursday at Words & Ears, when Susan Utting and Rishi Dastidar took up the guest poet challenge, both reading from their brand new collections, Half the Human Race and Ticker-tape. Huge thanks to them, and to guest MC Sam Loveless, who had things masterfully under control in his lovely relaxed and entertaining way. The first half was, everyone was quick to tell me in the interval, 'absolutely brilliant' (so sorry I missed that); in the second, I particularly loved hearing an example of one of Rishi's deconstructed sonnets, and can't quite forget the poem that likened having sex with him to licking stamps: posting a letter will never feel quite the same again! Susan intrigued us by opening a window in a painting and, while telling us she was 'Too Old to Die Young', seduced us all with a deliciously split apricot...
Thanks as always to those who came to read and to listen, who included Pey Oh Colborne (with a poem from her excellent series about her family - loved the rats that 'shiver through the bandaged shadows'), Sue Boyle (with a gorgeous extract from her novel-in-progress), Stephen Payne, Josephine Corcoran, Linda Saunders, Lesley Saunders, Frances-Anne King (with an intriguing poem from her sequence about the head, performed in two voices with Lesley), Rachael Clyne, Jinny Fisher, Liz Watts, Dru Marland, Ruth Sharman, John Ellison Kitching, Paul Brokensha, Luke Palmer, Hattie Parker, Francis Deas, Rosie Jackson, Brian Reid, Tom and many others...
