Fiona Robertson began writing poetry in 2013. In 2019 she was a top ten finalist in the Nottingham round of the UNESCO City of Literature Slamovision poetry slam. She has been a featured speaker at Words Out Loud in Chichester and Katie Curtin’s Creativity Caféonline. Her debut poetry collection, Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Soul will be published later this year. Fiona is also the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence. In 2021, she graduated from the University of Nottingham with an MA in Philosophy, forty years after graduating from the same university with a BA in History. She is also learning to speak Scottish Gaelic.
Sunken
All of it happened.
All of it finite.
All of it gone.
Yet here’s me
trying to rearrange
the chairs
on the long-submerged deck
as if there is still a chance
of rendering the shipwreck
bearable, somehow.
Many leagues beneath
this futile activity
abundant life blooms
in the stillness,
undisturbed.
(Better sailors
know when to
jump ship.)
Andy Sutton is a Nottingham based poet who writes poems that rhyme and all that. Designed to be accessible, often witty, and infused with word play, his poems may also have something to say. His poems deal with the familiar absurdities of life, and the injustices suffered by too many people. In there are also observations about fatherhood and his mixed-up dog. Andy enjoys performing, and aims to make you smile and think.
Things to be Made Illegal
Putting paper napkins on the plate under the snack
Cutting short by DJs of a long and classic track
Stickers on book covers that won’t peel so cause a rip
Queue jumping and hailstones, drinks too hot to sip
Yappy dogs, and cities where they charge for public loos
Cutting public services that people need to use
Plastic cups for indoor drinks, fonts too small to see
Do androids dream of electric poets? Come along to Open Book at The Organ Grinder, Nottingham on Tuesday 4th July at 8pm to find out.
We have an amazing triple bill lined up: Logan Thwaites, Charlie Baylis and Manjit Sahota. You won’t want to miss it.
LOGAN THWAITES
Logan has been writing fiction since his teens, primarily for himself for fun and he also had his first short story published in a zine in December! Logan is also a poet and has been performing a variety of styles of poems on many subjects around Nottingham, Derby and Leicester for the last year or so. Logan most enjoys writing about themes of sexuality, gender and mental health.
MANJIT SAHOTA
Originally from Nottingham, Manjit S Sahota is the co-founder of Poets Against Racism.
He has performed on stage and hosted Linton Kwesi Johnson and shared poetry and political debate with rapper Lowkey.
Manjit enjoys the chance to bring his brand of poetry to spark conversation and engage with people from all cultures and backgrounds.
His mission is clear: Love Poetry. Hate Bigotry.
CHARLIE BAYLIS
Charlie Baylis is from Nottingham, England. He is the editor of Anthropocene.
His first collection of poetry a fondness for the colour green is published by Broken Sleep Books.
Baylis has an uncanny ability to shift tone, as if between languages, with absolute fluency: these poems can turn from innocence to cynicism and back again within a single line. A surface reading makes you reach for terms like anarchic or surreal, but that doesn’t do the work justice, neither its soul nor its worldliness nor its unconditional love and petty irritation. The speakers get stuck on the details (fake lashes, limerence, unhealthy parasocial obsession with celebrity or poetry) but they’re always going somewhere and urgently gesturing you to follow. a fondness for the colour green is utterly and unabashedly contemporary, but there’s nothing light or modish, and what stands out are the moments of wounded humour and wonder, plenty of wonder, despite it all, because of it all.”
– Luke Kennard, Notes on the Sonnets
With tourmaline imagery, and reiterative hopes set against reiterative despairs, Baylis dances his way through this compelling and picaresque collection. Arch and playful in their acknowledgement of that gulf between poet and ‘I’, these poems rejoice in showing their conceptual strings, but never dispense with that vital vulnerability. a fondness for the colour green is a self-aware, sad, and beautiful book.”
Claire Meyrick (nee Hancock) is originally from East Anglia and now resides in West Bridgford ,Nottingham. She is a writer, spoken-word performer and singer. Claire has performed in a number of events across Nottingham including Crosswords open mic night and The Avenues Sneinton Market with DIY Poets. She can be seen at open mics across Nottingham or singing with West Bridgford Liberty Singers.
Recently, Claire has set up her own YouTube channel: ‘Claire a bells words’ to showcase her poetry.
Kathy was born in Nottingham, in the shadow of Player’s cigarette factory but has spent her adult life in London, the last 40 or so years in Covent Garden, specifically, in Seven Dials. She has had a rag-bag career in social work, community activism, arts television and artist development and now works on community-led public realm projects. She has published two pamphlets with The Emma Press, Elastic Glue (2019) and Goose Fair Night (2016). Her work has appeared in Magma, Mslexia, Brittle Star, The North, Poem, The Rialto and Under the Radar.
Next reading is 2 May 2023 – Martin Stannard & Jo Dixon
’27 Poems’ is what it says on the tin: 27 short poems – twelve and a half lines each, to be exact – which does and doesn’t practice what’s suggested in one of the poems:
. . . . we had roast chicken, roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts for dinner and it was very delightful. For pudding we had banana and custard and really I don’t know why more people don’t write more poems about these kinds of things. If you want more people to read more poems you should write more poems about this stuff. I would read them.
Published in February 2023 by Red Ceilings in a limited edition of 50 numbered copies.
Jo Dixon is a poet, critic and academic living in Nottingham. She was born in Stepney and spent her childhood in Colchester. Her poems appear in a range of publications, including New Walk, The Interpreter’s House, Furies (For Books’ Sake), In Transit (The Emma Press, 2018) and South Bank Poetry. Her debut poetry pamphlet, A Woman in the Queue, was published by Melos Press in 2016. An article on the poetry of Alice Oswald can be found at C21: Journal of 21st Century Writings. Her poem ‘Skegness Wake’ is included in Poems of Place: Mapping the Nation in Verse, edited by Andrew McRae and introduced by Paul Farley (London: Oneworld Publications, forthcoming Autumn 2020).
Jo reads her poetry across the East Midlands and in 2018 she visited Estonia to read at the Crazy Tartu Festival. She has worked on community poetry projects with Bilborough Sixth Form College, Nottingham Contemporary, St. Ann’s Allotments and UNESCO Cities of Literature in Poland, Estonia, Ireland and the UK. Her most recent commission is a poem written for the 50th anniversary of the twinning of Nottingham (UK) and Karlshruhe (Germany). Currently, she works as a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, Leicester.
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.
Jeremy Duffield is a Derbyshire poet and playwright who has been writing since the mid 1970s.
His work has featured widely in magazines and anthologies and he has been successful in many competitions.
His poems have most recently been published in the Peterloo Competition Anthology, Staple, Poetry Nottinghamand by Ragged Raven Press.
He has had two collections: Danced by the Light of the Moon (1994) and Oak Apples and Heavenly Kisses (2000).
He also facilitates poetry workshops and was a member of Inside Out – a collective of Nottingham-based writers who worked with prisoners at HMP Nottingham, and Open Doors at Sudbury Open Prison in Derbyshire.
His plays have been performed by the Pomegranate Youth Theatre in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. and his other interests include painting, walking, theatre and music.
Tuesday Shannon is an AHRC-funded PhD candidate at Nottingham Trent University. Her work has been featured in Soundswrite Press’s ‘Take Three: Volume One’, Left Lion, and others.
Between a boarded-up chippy
and a boarded-up florist
second- or third-hand fridges
lean to attention.
But there are no passers-by,
no eyes to catch and tempt –
just fallen leaves, empty buses,
artificial light.
In the shelter of a closed shop door
a teenager tugs at his hoodie,
lifts a cigarette with his left hand,
shakes a cannister in his right.
Across every shutter
one word in thick black paint
repeats like a mantra, or prayer.
The streetlights splutter on.
