News

Stanza 2 Open Mic 24 with Claire Cox

Kathleen McPhilemy’s guest reader at Stanza 2 Open Mic 24, at 7PM on Monday 27th February on Zoom, is Claire Cox. 

Born in Hong Kong, Claire now lives and works in Oxfordshire. She is co-founder and Associate Editor at ignitionpress, winner of the 2021 Michael Marks Publishers’ Award. Claire recently completed a part-time practice-based PhD with Royal Holloway, University of London, studying poetry and disaster. Her poems have been published in magazines and online, including Ink, Sweat & Tears, Magma, Spelt, Envoi, Butcher’s Dog, Anthropocene, Lighthouse and Poetry Salzburg Review. She was one of three winning poets included in Primers: Volume Five (Nine Arches Press, 2020), and the winner of the 2020 Wigtown Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize. 

To follow Kathleen’s very successful Stanza 2 Open Mic series, you can now go to a dedicated page on the Stanza 2 Website, at https://oxfordstanza2.wordpress.com/stanza-2-open-mic/

First Event of 2021!

On Sunday 10th January, at 6.45pm, Stanza 2 poets Caroline Houlston-Jackson, Bill Jenkinson and Carl Tomlinson will be joining the Barnes and Hardy Societies in a celebration of the work of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy, to be hosted, thanks to Mike Hobbs and the Beckley & Area Community Benefit Society, on the Abingdon Arms’ Zoom site:

Taking us through the seasons, readers and musicians from Dorset will perform poems and prose by Barnes and Hardy, including Barnes’ well-known ‘Linden Lea’ – which was set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. In addition, Oxfordshire poets will read their own poems, inspired by Barnes, Hardy and the seasons. 

A Dorset Year.jpg

For your Zoom access link, please go to https://bacbs.org/events

Saturday March 7th: Furnace, Forge and Kiln – Firing the wood

A day of celebration of the artistic uses of Wytham Woods with archaeologist Peter Hommel, guest poet Joe Butler and a poetry workshop led by Romola Parish, has been rescheduled and will run from 9.30 to 15. 30 on Saturday 7 March.

Programme Outline*

9.30am – Participants meet in Wytham Woods Main Car Park: Introduction by Romola Parish, then walk up to the Wytham Chalet.

10.00am – Meet Pete Hommel, archaeologist, for a smelting demonstration. (Or a fuller talk about current research in Archaeological Science in case of wet weather).

12.30pm – Lunch break at the Chalet (please bring a packed lunch**).

1.15pm – Poetry workshop led by Romola Parish, with readings by guest poet Joe Butler.

3.30pm – Close & Walk back to Wytham Woods Car Park.

* Timings flexible

**Tea & coffee making facilities are available, and biscuits will be provided.

To book via Eventbrite go here To visit Joe Butler’s website go here

Hurry! Your unmissable Oxfordshire showcase for poetry: 8th Woodstock Poetry Festival – this weekend!

Friday to Sunday 15 – 17 November 2019

For tickets and information: 01993 812760 or info@woodstockbookshop.co.uk

Festival ticket giving entry to all events – £60. Children & students half price. Tea and cakes are included in the price of all afternoon events.

Friday’s readings are held in St Mary Magdalene Church; Saturday & Sunday readings take place upstairs in Woodstock Town Hall.

The final event is in Woodstock Social Club where drinks are available very reasonably from the bar

FRIDAY 15 NOVEMBER

7pm Hugo Williams reads from Lines Off, his first collection since 2014, written following transplant surgery – ‘haunting, shining, untidy poems… vivid with emotion and experience’ (Fiona Sampson, Spectator); ‘Williams has a gift for making poetry read as effortlessly as conversation – a huge accomplishment’ (Kate Kellaway, Guardian). £10 (Wine and sandwiches will be served between this and the following reading and a joint ticket for the evening is available at £15)

8.30pm Kei Miller reads from In Nearby Bushes, his highly anticipated new collection that explores his strangest landscape yet – the placeless place. Here is a world in which it is possible both to hide and to heal, a landscape as much marked by magic as it is by murder. His previous collection won the Forward Prize. £10

SATURDAY 16 NOVEMBER

5.30pm Niall Campbell & Vidyan Ravinthiram, published by Bloodaxe, are shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize. Both collections start from the domestic – Campbell’s Noctuary, a diary for late hours, reflects on fatherhood; The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here began as personal sonnets for Ravinthiran’s wife. £10

7pm Patrick McGuinness & Giorgia Sensi, poetry in translation. Giorgia Sensi has translated many British poets into Italian, including Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead, Gillian Clarke and Kathleen Jamie. She and Patrick McGuinness discuss Déjà-vu, her parallel-text edition of his poems. £8

8.30pm Julia Copus & Jane Clarke. In Girlhood (‘this phenomenal collection’, Kate Kellaway, Observer) Julia Copus exposes the shifting power balance between things on the verge of becoming and the forces that threaten to destroy them. Jane Clarke’s second collection with Bloodaxe, When the Tree Falls, bears witness to the rhythms of birth and death, celebration and mourning, endurance and regrowth. £10

SUNDAY 17 NOVEMBER

2pm Laureate’s Choice – Faith Lawrence, followed by Open mic. A chance to hear one of the poets selected by Carol Ann Duffy read from her new pamphlet Sleeping Through. Faith is a producer on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. Open mic is introduced by Jenny Lewis of The Poet’s House, Oxford. This popular platform for local and unpublished poets is open to all but should be booked in advance. The format is informal and supportive – we welcome first-time readers. Please email the bookshop if you would like to read. £6

4.30pm Hannah Sullivan & Mary Jean Chan. Mary Jean Chan’s first collection Flèche has just been published by Faber: ‘Sparkling and vulnerable… the arrival of an essential new voice’ – Sarah Howe. Hannah Sullivan was the winner of last year’s T.S. Eliot Prize for Three Poems, her first collection: ‘ A magnificent debut…challenging the parameters of what poetry can do’ – Sinead Morrissey. £10

6.30pm Raymond Antrobus reads from The Perseverance, winner of the Ted Hughes award and the Rathbones Folio prize, shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize: ‘…an insightful, frank and intimate rumination on language, identity, heritage, loss and the art of communication. Ranging from tender elegies about his father to frank interrogations of deafness, Antrobus highlights the persistence of memory and our need to connect’ – Malika Booker. £10

8.30pm Legendary folk singer and songwriter Peggy Seeger joins poets Bernard O’Donoghue & Tom Paulin with Judith & Nick Hooper (fiddle and guitar) for the welcome return of our final session – an evening of music and poetry. Both poets have published many poetry collections with Faber. Tom Paulin is also well known for his appearances on BBC’s Newsnight Review, and his readings of the poetry of W.B. Yeats; Bernard O’Donoghue is currently translating Piers Plowman. This event is held in Woodstock Social Club. £10

Reading and Workshop at the Quaker Meeting House, 12 October

In the series POEMS IN THE QUAKER MEETING HOUSE
at 43 St Giles  Oxford

Philip Gross and Lesley Saunders will read from their book A PART OF THE MAIN: A CONVERSATION (Mulfran, 2019), a dialogic poem, even an improvisation, born of the difficult feelings and public discord arising from the events of 2016.
Philip is a Quaker as well as a T.S.Eliot prize winner and author of 20 collections of poems.
Lesley is author of several books of poetry, most recently Nominy-Dominy  (Two Rivers Press, 2018). She is a creative collaborator with many other ‘makers’ of  different art forms.
Lesley and Philip first met through a collaborative poetry venture A Game of Consequences in which 26 poets were invited to share their thoughts and feelings about living in a nuclear age.

This reading will be at 6.30 for 7pm till 9pm on Sat. October 12th
For the reading: free admission +  a collection (for the Quaker Meeting House)  + refreshments

On the afternoon of the same day, Back Room Poets present a poetry workshop with Philip Gross:
Renga: When poetry grows in the spaces between us
The workshop will explore collaboration in poetry through linked verses in the spirit of haiku.
Saturday 12 October, 2019, 2.30-5.00pm
Friends Meeting House, 43 St Giles,
Oxford, OX1 3LW
For more details on the workshop and how to sign up, please go to the Events page of the Back Room Poets website.

Poetry Reading: Truth or truths

On the evening of Sunday 6 October, Back Room Poets are hosting an event at which local poets have been invited to read poems on the National Poetry Day subject of Truth or a truth.

There will also be an open mic section and a writing challenge with prompts.

Entry is free.

Some refreshments will be available.

St. Hilda’s College has kindly allowed us to use one of their rooms and the venue will be signed from the college entrance.

Doors open at 6pm.