Jean Sprackland

Jean has published five poetry collections, most recently Green Noise, and her book Tilt was the winner of the Costa Poetry Award in 2008. She is also the author of Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach, which won the Portico Prize for Non-Fiction in 2012. Jean is Professor of Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Chair of the Poetry Archive. (See ‘The FRP Interview’ with Jean here)

Erling Kittelsen

Kittelsen had his debut as a poet in 1970. He has since than published several poetry cycles and collections, as well as fables, dramatic works and translations of poetry.

He is known for his dialogues, partly with colleagues and partly in the work with the translation of poetry from distant languages in relation to the Nordic language area like Arabian, Persian, Korean, Latvian and Sumerian.

We welcome Julie Sampson and Chrissy Banks for this evening’s event. Both poets have current or past affiliations with Fire River Poets. Their biographies are given below:

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Rose Cook  is a well-known South West poet who performs regularly at festivals and poetry events. Rose co-founded the popular Devon poetry and performance forum One Night Stanza, as well as poetry performance group Dangerous Cardigans. Hearth is her latest book of poetry. Her website is www.rosecook.wordpress.com
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Ian Royce Chamberlain will be reading as our guest poet for our Autumn series of poetry readings at The Creative Innovation Centre on Thursday September 6^th 2018, at 8pm.

In a long career as a mechanical engineer, Ian Royce Chamberlain learned that, to work properly, a high-performance machine must be meticulously assembled. Poetry, he says, demands the precision engineering of words. Or, to combine both disciplines, “Put the bits together properly and it’ll work.”

Do read the extract of the interview with him by FRP member Graeme Ryan  here
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The Somerset Young Poets Competition 2018 drew over 1,000 entries from 33 schools.
The theme was When Worlds Collide.
Read all of the winning, highly commended and commended poems at Somerset Young Poets Anthology 2018.