Featuring S.L. Grange, David Walrond, Tess Biddington, & Faith M.W. Buckley. Hosted by Zoë Brigley
Date: Friday 29th July
Time: 12:00
Venue: Theatre
Price: £5.00 / £3.00
This event celebrates the work and projects of Poetry Wales
Editor of Poetry Wales, Zoe Brigley, will open the festival by thinking about what wellness might mean after the recent pandemic. Issue 58.1 of Poetry Wales invited work especially from disabled writers who were extremely impacted during lockdown and pandemic conditions. Beyond being merely a term for self-help, we establish that our idea of wellness means not only self-care and healing, but also equitable living standards and justice.
This event is also a celebration of Poetry Wales’ recent projects. S.L. Grange, winner of the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition, will read from their new pamphlet, Bodies and Other Haunted Houses. There will also be an award-giving ceremony for the Wales Poetry Award, with readings from the winners: first prize David Walrond, Tess Biddington, and Faith M.W. Buckley.
Authors
S.L. Grange is a poet and theatre-maker. Their work engages with queer community, marginalised voices and unruly ghosts. Recent work includes: Wou d’Uelzecht created with composer Catherine Kontz; A Note to Mary Frith, commissioned by Shakespeare’s Globe and Bodies and Other Haunted Houses, winner of the Poetry Wales pamphlet competition 2021. Photo credit: Cristina Volpe
David Walrond grew up in Cardigan and Cardiff and has lived in Cornwall for the last 20 years. He recently retired from working in further education. He won the Llanishen Comprehensive School Eisteddfod Poetry Prize in 1973 under a pseudonym. Shortly after that he took what turned out to be a much longer than planned break from writing.
Tess Biddington lived for many years in the Forest of Dean and now lives in Cheltenham. She works full time for a national partnership to address domestic abuse. She has been published in magazines and won some prizes including the Forward Prize in 2000, but has only recently been able to focus fully on writing due to the lockdown. The space and silence that it gave her helped her to reconnect with poetry and paint.
Faith M.W. Buckley is Spoken Word Artist and Co-founder of The Full Spectrum Project, find the project on Facebook @fullspectrumproject. Faith hosts Spectrum Live, a 6 weekly event bringing together, the best of South Wales’ talent in Music, Spoken Word, Comedy and Poetry. She is an advocate for diversity in the Welsh Arts Scene, with many of her works focusing on the LGBTIQA+ community, loss and belonging. Currently working on children’s books with her poet husband as well as a Art and Spoken Word play with her co-founder and digital designer, Gareth Smiles. When not writing and performing, Faith is kept busy with her family and enjoys nothing more than having fun with her husband, 4 children and 2 dogs in the beautiful Welsh vistas and coastlines.
Zoë Brigley is editor of Poetry Wales, and poetry editor at Seren. She published three poetry books from Bloodaxe, most recently Hand & Skull (2019). All three were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her debut The Secret (2007) won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30 and was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 40.