This year The Big Poetry Weekend (formerly known as Poetry Swindon), will he held online, after missing out a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Events can be booked via Eventbrite, and there will be wonderful workshops, readings, open mics, and events. Though we’ll all miss the tent dancing and October deluges, I’m really pleased to be a part of the proceedings, both as a volunteer and a featured reader.
As always, the guests and poets are top-notch, and I woudn’t miss it for the world!
Check out the full programme here: https://bigpoetryweekend.com/2021-full-programme/
I’ll be joining some amazing fellow poets Caleb Parkin, Chaucer Cameron, Vik Shirley, and Rachel Long for the Afternoon debut poets’ reading on Sunday, 24 October 2021, which is a free event (follow the above link for ticketing, all events through Eventbrite). Please come and join us! More about the poets below.
Miranda Lynn Barnes is a poet from the US, now resident in the UK. Her poems have appeared in New Welsh Reader, Shearsman, Tears in the Fence, Under the Radar, Marble Poetry, and Lighthouse Journal, among other journals. Miranda’s work has also appeared in a number of anthologies, including Bloody Amazing, Maths Poems, and A Hatchery of Shadows: Poems about Plants, Brain and Imagination. Miranda taught creative writing for five years at Bath Spa University, where she now serves as Research Publications Librarian. Her debut pamphlet, Blue Dot Aubade, was published with V. Press in 2020.
Chaucer Cameron is the author of In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered (Against the Grain, 2021) She has been published in magazines and anthologies, including Under the Radar, Poetry Salzburg and The North. She is also the creator of Wild Whispers, an international poetry film project, and curates and presents poetry film at events and festivals. She is co-editor of the online magazine, Poetry Film Live.
Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions was published by Picador in 2020. It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Jhalak Prize Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. She is the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for women of colour, housed at the Southbank Centre.
Caleb Parkin, Bristol City Poet 2020-22, won second prize in the National Poetry Competition 2016, the Winchester Poetry Prize 2017, and has placed on other competition shortlists. His poems have appeared in The Rialto, Poetry Review, Under the Radar, Poetry Wales, Magma, Butcher’s Dog, Lighthouse, and elsewhere. He tutors for Poetry Society, Poetry School, Cheltenham Festivals, and First Story, and holds an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes (CWTP). He previously worked in BBC TV and radio production, as a teacher, and as a Senior Inclusion Worker. He lives in a human-canine pack in suburban Bristol. His debut pamphlet, Wasted Rainbow, was published with tall-lighthouse and his debut collection This Fruiting Body with Nine Arches Press in October 2021.
Vik Shirley’s chapbook, Corpses (Sublunary Editions), was published in 2020, and her collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN Press), and her photo-poetry book, Disrupted Blue and Other Poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock), were published in 2021. Her work has appeared in such places as Poetry London, The Rialto, Magma, Shearsman and 3am Magazine. She is currently studying for a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal at the University of Birmingham.
miranda lynn barnes 