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

Josephine Corcoran

Guest Poet: Josephine Corcoran

Josephine Corcoran's work as a short story writer and playwright has been published, performed on stage and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has published a pamphlet with tall-lighthouse and her first full collection, What Are You After was published by Nine Arches Press in June. She has held various writing residencies in the south west and has taught writing in universities, schools and community settings. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UEA, and is founder and editor of the online poetry magazine, And Other Poems. Her website and blog is at www.josephinecorcoran.org

Lesley Saunders

Guest Poet: Lesley Saunders

Lesley Saunders is a poet whose work has won several awards, including the inaugural Manchester Poetry Prize. Her recent book Angels on Horseback, was one of the winners of the Poetry Business Pamphlet awards in 2017. Her latest book is Nominy-Dominy from Two Rivers Press. She too enjoys collaborations with other poets, artists and dancers. lesley574@btinternet.com

30th August 2018, The Swan Hotel, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1LN

We were in the territory of where personal and world histories meet last night at Words & Ears, when both our guest poets, Lesley Saunders and Josephine Corcoran, shared work from their new collections. As Lesley said, there are, tragically, always echoes of the past in current affairs - human suffering on repeat - and 'it's the soft things that perish first', but her book, Nominy-Dominy, also digs down for more benign constants, the 'colour at the back of things', as in her meditation on the colour indigo, and in her deliciously wise, extended poem about Sappho, transplanted to the Irish island of Inishbofin. Josephine took us from the Irish Potato Famine (in the title poem of her book, What Are You After?) to 'tray after tray / of blossom-filled boulevards' in Paris, with a sense of the poignant way our small histories swim through the world of bigger ones - both movingly and humorously brought home in one of my favourites, Love in the time of hospital visits.
As always, the open mic was rich and varied, with new voices and lots of familiar ones, including Rachael Clyne giving us a couple of sneak peeks into her brand new book, Girl Golem. Other readers were Stephen Payne, Ray Fussell, Michelle Diaz (herself riding on a wave of recent poetry successes), Mark Sayers, Richard Devereux, Tom Sastry, Kieron Bacon, Ginny Saunders, John Powell, B Adriens, Linda Saunders, Peter O'Grady, Heidi Beck, John Hawkhead and Paul Brokensha. Thanks to everyone for helping to make it such a great night.