Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham in 1972, son of a truck driver, grandson of a miner. He still lives in the city and works as a bus driver. Somewhere along the way, he started writing poetry and hasn’t yet found a good enough reason to stop. He has published three collections with Shoestring Press: ‘No Avoiding It’, ‘Can’t Take Me Anywhere’ and ‘Service Cancelled’. His most recent collection, with Smokestack Books, is ‘Mad Parade’, which brings together political satires and response poems written over a period of six years.
Neil has also published three books of film criticism, including ‘The Films of Sam Peckinpah’. He co-edited, with David Sillitoe, the tribute anthology ‘More Raw Material: work inspired by Alan Sillitoe’.
Neil’s poetry, short fiction, articles and book reviews have been published widely in the small press. He curates and emcees the monthly Open Book poetry and spoken word events at the Organ Grinder. He is married, no children, and has a time-share option on next door’s cats.
My poem:
TEAM LEADER
You were one of us
once – early swerve, early
doors, two fingers to them
in their panelled offices.
Now you’re grasping
at rungs still far up the ladder,
eye on the classic poacher
turned gamekeeper scenario
but you’re not even that:
just a starry-eyed villager
with holes in his shoes
dawdling near the manor.
Andrea’s biog:
Andrea Bowd is a PhD Student at the University of Nottingham, Poet, Writer, Cat Sitter, Invigilator, and follower of all things strange. Which combined, leaves me little time for much else. I’m constantly composing poems in my head, and also constantly forgetting to write (most of them) down.
A few of my poems have been published in magazines such as Snakeskin, Skylark, Front Horse, The Ekphrastic Review, Mud Press and Dreamcatcher. And in places including The Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall, The Nottingham Contemporary Gallery and The Department of The Built Environment at Nottingham University.
I’m so looking forward to sharing some of my poems with you at this fantastic regular poetry event at the Organ Grinder!
Andrea’s poem:
FREEDOM
I see fronds
beneath
translucent ice,
like hair,
pulled straight with
the flow of fast,
water.
I feel the fronds
waving, screaming,
hiding white mouths.
Lips opening and closing
with the ebb and flow.
If I listen closely
a limb might appear
and break a fist shaped hole
through the cold blanket.
Trevor’s biog:
Trevor Wright is originally from Bulwell and works in health and social care, specialising in autism. He is a member of Nottingham’s DIY Poets collective and has performed at many local poetry events as well as the Nottingham and Gloucester Poetry Festivals and Edinburgh Fringe.
He has been a commissioned writer on the Writing East Midlands Local: Vocal former coalfields project, with older people’s mental health on the Elder Tree initiative and led the Beyond the Spectrum creative writing for autistic people project.
His work has featured in several anthologies including Nottingham (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), Over Land Over Sea (Five Leaves Press), World Jams Us v Covid (Beam Editions) and has two poetry collections, Outsider Heart and Salt Flow published by Nottingham’s Big White Shed.
“Trevor’s poetry is a bruised and brave music and if justice is to be done, should be housed under soul”. Poet, Publisher and Educator, Miggy Angel.
Trevor is also a Writer Trustee of the Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Trevor’s poem:
YALLA
Shadowed by fissured rock,
fingers funnelling cooling sand,
the pull of the moon carving
the rhythm I need to pierce
the gloom, smell the horizon,
taste futures. I hunker down
to take soft hand to hand as
she quietly asks, who hears?
Who sees? Will land touch us?
Night folds in. Of course, I laugh.
The stars listen, the moon sees,
new lane will find us. Yalla!
Yet another dawn,
chest to chest, rib to rib, my
last daughter curves in my lap,
exposed to a firmament fully
intent on pressing our shared
breath to the depths. I raise
my trailed palm, cool my brow,
wrinkled fingers stroke dreams,
residue all at odds with the tides.
Does anyone tune into the stars?
Who cares what the moon sees?
Will land reach out? Yalla! Yalla!