Coffee House Poetry

readings - spring 2010

mondays 8-10 pm, £7 (concs. £6)

• mon 11 jan, ring in the new: with sue rose, christopher reid, katrina naomi, john wedgewood clarke, maureen boyle, paul maddern, wendy french, william oxley, joyce sutphen and henry fajemirokun

• mon 25 jan, smiths knoll: michael laskey & joanna cutts introduce robert etty, emily wills, david healey, marianne burton, stephen payne, esther morgan, christopher james, catherine ormell

• mon 8 feb, seren/poetry wales: amy wack & zoë skoulding introduce pascale petit, patrick mcguinness, siobhan campbell, kathryn simmonds, james methven, samantha wynne rhydderch, meirion jordan and carol rumens

• mon 22 feb, escarmouches II: war of independence …coffee-house colloquies with alan jenkins, carrie etter, roddy lumsden and molly peacock

• mon 8 mar, magma 46: magazine launch with guest poets anne-marie fyfe and penelope shuttle

• mon 22 mar, spring fever: a seasonal end-of-season poetry party

programme details

mon 11 jan, ring in the new: with sue rose, christopher reid, katrina naomi, john wedgewood clarke, maureen boyle, paul maddern, wendy french, william oxley, joyce sutphen and henry fajemirokun

New poets, new collections, new work, for the first spring season in a new decade.

• Literary translator Sue Rose won first prize in The Troubadour Poetry Prize 2009;

• former Faber poetry editor Christopher Reid (latest collection, A Scattering, 2009) teaches at University of Hull;

• Katrina Naomi, (The Girl with the Cactus Handshake, 2009) is currently Brontë Parsonage Museum Writer-in-Residence;

• John Wedgewood Clarke is Arc poetry editor & Beverly Literary Festival director;

• Maureen Boyle was 2007 winner of both Strokestown Poetry Prize & Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize;

• Paul Maddern (b. Bermuda) is building an archive of poetry readings at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queens, Belfast;

• Wendy French (latest collection, surely you know this, tall lighthouse, 2009) is a freelance promoting writing in healthcare settings;

• William Oxley (Sunlight in a Champagne Glass, Rockingham, 2009) has been variously an accountant, an actor & a gardener;

• Joyce Sutphen (First Words, Red Dragonfly Press, 2009) teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota.

Plus songs from guitarist Henry Fajemirokun

mon 25 jan, smiths knoll: michael laskey & joanna cutts introduce robert etty, emily wills, david healey, marianne burton, stephen payne, esther morgan, christopher james, catherine ormell

Smiths Knoll editors Michael Laskey & Joanna Cutts introduce a programme of current contributors.

• Robert Etty (Half a Field’s Distance, Shoestring) had poems in the very first Smiths Knoll;

• Emily Wills (Developing the Negative, Rialto) lives in Gloucestershire;

• retired GP David Healey works with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust;

• Marianne Burton is working on a PhD on Sexual Euphemism in the Nineteenth Century Novel;

• Stephen Payne is Computer Science Professor at University of Bath;

• Esther Morgan’s first collection won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize – her latest is The Silence Living in Houses;

• Christopher James (The Invention of Butterfly, Ragged Raven, 2009) has won Bridport, Ledbury & National competitions;

• Catherine Ormell had her poem Campaign Desk shortlisted for ??Forward “best poem” 2009.

mon 8 feb, seren/poetry wales: amy wack & zoë skoulding introduce pascale petit, patrick mcguinness, siobhan campbell, kathryn simmonds, james methven, samantha wynne rhydderch, meirion jordan and carol rumens

Seren Books editor Amy Wack & Poetry Wales editor Zoë Skoulding introduce nine of the press’s poets and/or magazine’s contributors:

• Next Gen poet Pascale Petit – her 5th collection What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo (Seren, 2010) will appear in May 2010;

• fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, Patrick McGuinness (forthcoming, Jilted City, Carcanet);

• Siobhan Campbell (Cross-Talk, Seren, 2009), prizewinner in Troubadour, National & Mslexia competitions;

• Kathyrn Simmonds— Sunday at the Skin Launderette (Seren) won the 2008 Forward First Collection prize;

• Oriel College (Oxford) lecturer James Methven, who won the inaugural Poetry Wales Purple Moose Prize with Precious Asses (2009);

• Samantha Wynne Rhydderch whose Not In These Shoes (Picador) was shortlisted for the 2009 Wales Book of the Year;

• Meirion Jordan— Moonrise (Seren) was shortlisted for the 2009 Forward First Collection prize;

• Zoë Skoulding, a Research Fellow at Bangor University—latest collection Remains of a Future City (Seren, 2008);

• and Carol Rumens, whose 15th collection, De Chirico’s Threads is due from Seren in June.

mon 22 feb, escarmouches II: war of independence …coffee-house colloquies with alan jenkins, carrie etter, roddy lumsden and molly peacock

…or The Colony Strikes Back. Coffee-House Colloquies returns for another minor skirmish, this time on questions of British and American representation in each other’s poetic bestseller lists and on whether we’re divided by a common poetic language: reading their own poems in the first half before weighing in on one or another side of a very civil war, or panel discussion, will be:

• TLS Deputy Editor Alan Jenkins (A Shorter Life, Chatto, 2005),

• Carrie Etter (b. Normal, Illinois) who teaches at Bath Spa University (The Tethers, Seren, 2009),

• Gregory Award & Forward Prize winner Roddy Lumsden (b. St. Andrews), latest collection Third Wish Wasted (Bloodaxe, 2009)

• and Molly Peacock (b. Buffalo, NY, 6th collection The Second Blush, Norton, 2008) who has performed her one-woman show in poems, The Shimmering Verge, Off-Broadway and throughout North America.

mon 8 mar, magma 46: magazine launch with guest poets anne-marie fyfe and penelope shuttle

A major moment in the poetry season when the latest Magma rolls off the presses, but a mega-moment in Magma’s poetry-magazine history tonight as David Boll, who has MC’d hundreds of Magma contributors onto the Troubadour stage since Issue 13 in January 1999 and introduced dozens of guest poets, and well and truly launched 33 issues here, hosts his last launch as editorial committee chairman. Helping celebrate this Magma milestone will be Magma 46 editors, Jacqueline Saphra and Norbert Hirschhorn, the regular Magma team, a wide selection of Magma 46 contributors and two guest poets:

• Anne-Marie Fyfe (b. Cushendall, Co. Antrim, lives in London) who organises Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour readings and workshops, latest collection The Ghost Twin (Peterloo, 2005)

• and Penelope Shuttle (b. Feltham, lives in Falmouth) founder-member of the Falmouth Poetry Group – her 10th poetry collection, including a selected, is Redgrove’s Wife (Bloodaxe, 2006)

mon 22 mar, spring fever: a seasonal end-of-season poetry party

What better time than the first day after the vernal equinox to celebrate Spring, Easter, March giving way to April, and the inexhaustible poetry of renewal.

Gerard Manley Hopkins thought Nothing… so beautiful as spring while Tennyson suggested that In the spring a young man’s fancy/ lightly turns to thoughts of love, echoing Frank Wedekind’s concerns in Spring Awakening. Oscar Hammerstein wondered why he should have spring fever… when it isn’t even spring, though he admitted It might as well be spring! Johnny Mercer simply went for Spring, Spring, Spring relying on repetition to convey enthusiasm for the season.

If it was Chaucer who first wrote of April showers, it was Al Jolson’s cover-version that was the mega-hit. Browning wanted to be in England now that April’s here but Yip Harburg opted for April in Paris while Eric Maschwitz preferred the winds of March that make my heart a dancer… Akhmatova has her March Elegy and Eliot thought April the cruellest month.

And then again maybe guest readers will choose Eastertide poems, Clough’s Easter Day or Yeats’s Easter 1916 or Paul Muldoon’s Good Friday, 1971, Driving Westward, John Donne having come up with a similar title 358 years earlier. It is Easter over all our lives, Paul Durcan wrote, in The Piéta’s Over…

Celebrate the first spring of the new decade by coming along to listen to the sudden flowering of a thousand (well, not quite) springtime odes from our invited guest readers, and join in the springly exuberance of our not-too-competitive not-too-literary prize quiz with suitably themed spring songs.