October POETRY EXTRAVAGANZA

The Gloucester Poetry Festival 2023

4 Days of poetry events across the city of Gloucester

The Gloucester Poetry Festival is an annual festival of poetry run by the Gloucestershire Poet Laureate Z.D. Dicks, Director of the Gloucester Poetry Festival and a group of passionate volunteers.

Please note that the festival is a separate entity and is not part of the GPS. For any information about the festival, please contact the festival director.

Email the festival director

Download Event Flyer

Below is the full list of events during the 2023 festival

Please note that the information below may change in the run-up to the festival.

Thursday 12th @Tiger’s Eye Cocktail Bar

Sounds of the Beat Generation & Beyond - an evening of Beat Music

Friday 13th @Tiger’s Eye Cocktail Bar

8:00 PM – 10:00 PM – The Survivor Poetry Slam

Confirmed Competitors:

Chris Barber
Louise Diamont
Darren Hoskins
Mark Hunchinson
Kate Jenkinson
Rihanna Levi
Trevor Ulysses
Alice Woolf
Brian Maurice
Dominic James
Trevor Valentine
Tony Jackson
Marcus Annfield

Survivor Slam Rules

On arrival, contestants will need to provide a short bio (approximately 30 Words)

The order of performance in each round will be by a random draw of the poets’ names from a hat.

Poems do not have to be memorised.

There will be three elimination rounds (15 10 5 contestants)

Disqualification will occur for the use of non-original poems.

It’s not a singing contest.

No props or musical instruments.

Contestants will be judged on their poetic content/performance.

The score will consist of three Judge scores combined.

3 slam judges will be picked on the night from the audience by the comperes.

Any poet found to have performed a poem that is not their own original work will be disqualified.

The time will start at the first utterance, even if it is not part of the poem, so any time spent saying “hello” or introducing the poem(s) will be counted.

In each round, each poet will have up to 3 minutes to perform one original poem, and poets must perform a different poem(s) in each round.

Going over the 3-minute time limit will incur a 1 point deduction from the poet’s final score per 10 seconds started over the time limit. For example, you will lose one point if you exceed 3 minutes by between 1 second and 10 seconds. You will lose 2 points if you exceed 3 minutes by between 11 seconds and 20 seconds, and so on.

Each judge, in each round, will award each poet a score out of 10 (decimal places allowed). The three scores will be added, and any time points will be deducted to give a final score.

The top ten in the first round will go through to the semi-final. The Top 5 in the semi-final will go through to the final.

The first round will be composed of 3 heats of made up of 15 competitors

(3 heats with 5 in each group)

The highest scoring poet in each heat,

plus the two highest scoring runners up of each heat, go through.

The single highest-scoring contestant from the remaining poets will progress as well.

To total 10 poets in the semi-final.

The second round will consist of 2 heats made up of 10 competitors,

(2 heats with 5 poets in each group)

The highest-scoring poet in the heat,

plus the single highest-scoring runner from each heat, go through.

The next highest-scoring contestant from the remaining poets will progress as well.

To total 5 poets in the final.

The final round will consist of 1 heat made up of 5 competitors, and the highest-scoring Poet will win the Gorilla Slam.

If there is a tie, there will be a Haiku Round as a tie-breaker.

Prizes will be awarded to the winner.

Saturday 14th @the Folk of Gloucester - 12:00 PM - 9:30 PM

12:00 - 5:00 PM - Continuous Poetry Readings

Chris Barber

Dan Cooper

Ade Couper

Mary Csillag

Katy Fesel

Megan Gorleone

Julian Horsfield

Brian Maurice

Avril O’Leary

Erin Poppy

Carol Sheppard

Paul Southcott

Jacqui Stearn

Jema Swales

Trevor Ulysses

Alice Woolf

All Day - Poetry Buffet - tabletop book sales

12:00 PM - 2:00 PM - Poetry in the Round Workshop

A round-table poetry discussion hosted by Karlostheunhappy

12:30 PM - 2:30 PM - Wildlings Gloucestershire Poets’ showcase

How to come to terms with ruins of our own making?

In work that explores our connections with animals, ancestry, offspring and the elements, five Gloucestershire-based poets will ask what it means to confront the consequences of everyday planetary catastrophe. With Alun Hughes, Ronnie McGrath, JLM Morton, Kate Potts, Martha Sprackland.

Alun Hughes is a poet and singer living in Stroud, Gloucestershire. In 2020, he received a MA Creative Writing with Distinction from Bath Spa University. In 2021, he was a digital writer in residence with Dialect at the Cotswold Water Park and won third prize in the Troubadour International Poetry Competition. In 2022, he was shortlisted for the Laurie Lee Prize. Alun started working on land in 2000 as a farmhand on an organic farm just north of Lewes, Sussex. Since then, he has worked as a woodsman, yurt maker, hedge layer, teacher of woodland management and green woodwork. In 2008, he became involved in designing and facilitating courses in nature based practice and wilderness work. With a commitment to helping young people grow into their potential, Alun has worked as a tutor at Ruskin Mill College and at The Grove home schooling project in Stroud.

Alun’s poetry pamphlet Down the Heavens, is published by Yew Tree Press. Somewhere Somewhere, an album of nine poems from the collection to original soundtracks, made with the band Lensmen, is out now on the Irregular Patterns label.

Ronnie McGrath (aka “ronsurreal”) is a socially conscious visual artist, neo-surrealist poet and novelist. Data Trace, his first collection of poetry was published by Salt in 2010, and he has both poetry and prose in various anthologies published by Penguin, Peepal Tree Press, 2Leaf Press, and Tall-Light House Press. A former creative writing lecturer at The University of the Arts, he currently teaches creative writing at Imperial College London, and Stroud College where he also teaches writing as a therapeutic tool. As a community artist, he facilitates a blend of visual art and creative writing workshops for Artlift, and Mount Carmel, an addiction rehabilitation centre. Ronnie is the co-founder of Black Ark Media, with DJ High Priest Derrick McLean, which aims to shed critical light on what it means to be Black and British through meaningful conversations and socially conscious art in a time of perpetual change.

JLM Morton Winner of the Laurie Lee and Geoffrey Dearmer Prizes, JLM Morton is a writer and poet whose work is published internationally in journals including The Poetry Review, The Rialto and most recently in the ethnography Living With Water (Manchester University Press, 2023). Her latest collaboration is Glos Mythos (Dialect Press, 2023) with satirist Emma Kernahan and cartoonist Bill Jones, who share a fascination with the ways ideas about archetypes, folklore and myth gain popularity during times of adversity. Her first collection of poems Red Handed is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books (2024). Often interdisciplinary, Juliette’s work explores cultural identity and belonging, ancestry, place and practices of care and kinship across human and other-than-human worlds.

Kate Potts Kate Potts is a poet and academic. She teaches for Middlesex University and The Poetry School, and freelances as a creative writing tutor, mentor and editor.

Kate's second collection, Feral (Bloodaxe, 2018) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and a Telegraph poetry book of the month. Her debut pamphlet Whichever Music (tall-lighthouse, 2008) was a Poetry Book Society choice and was shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her first first full-length collection was Pure Hustle (Bloodaxe, 2011). She is currently working on Pretenders, an Arts Council England funded multi-voice work exploring imposter syndrome.

Martha Sprackland is an editor, writer and translator. She is a co-founding editor of multilingual arts zine La Errante and the independent publishing house Offord Road Books; in 2021 she was appointed poetry editor for CHEERIO Publishing. She has translated poetry by Ana Gorría, Verónica Viola Fisher and Gladys Mendía, and fiction by Sara Mesa. In 2021 she was shortlisted for the Peirene–Stevns Translation Prize. She has published two pamphlets, Glass As Broken Glass (Rack, 2017) and Milk Tooth (Rough Trade Books, 2018), and her debut collection of poems, Citadel (LUP, 2020) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Costa Poetry Award and the John Pollard International Poetry Prize.

2:45 PM – 3:15 PM - Meet the Laureate

Open discussion with Gloucestershire Poet Laureate Z.D. Dicks

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Oh Crumbs! Showcase

4:45 PM – 5:45 PM - Dean Writers Poetry Showcase

Dean Writers Circle is a group of writers based in the Forest of Dean. The group has been running for over 40 years and has award-winning poets, playwrights and writers amongst them. Come and join them on their poetry extravaganza with poems to delight, shock and intrigue.

Krystal Brown

Jean Cooper Moran

James Frankland

Celia Harper

Ann Harvey

Phil Jones

Karlostheunhappy

Val Ormrod

Jolie Marchant

Carol Sheppard

7:15 PM - 8:15 PM - Black Eyes Publishing UK Presents

Hosted by Josephine Lay

Hannah M. Teasdale - In 1976, Hannah was born and ‘hard-raised’ in Birmingham where she was taught the Fine Art of poor decision making. 18 years later, she was ‘shot’ to the Soft- South-West where she put into practice all she had learned.

In recent times, now in Cambridge, she is ‘Mastering’ the Fine Art of unlearning.

Hannah now identifies as a work in progress; there’s no guilt, shame or inadequacy attached to ‘letting go’. ‘Indelicate Sundays’ is Hannah’s third collection – a last-ditch attempt to learn from all those poor decisions, and will be published by Black Eyes on 17th October 2023.

Zoe Brooks - After many years working with disadvantaged communities in London and Oxford, Zoe Brooks returned to her first love – writing and performing poetry, dividing her time between the UK and the Czech Republic. Her first visit to that country, only months after the Velvet Revolution, was a major inspiration for ‘Fool’s Paradise’, published by Black Eyes in 2022

Zoe’s collection Owl Unbound was published in 2020 by Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Michael Horovitz’s Grandchildren of Albion, The Rialto, Pennine Platform, and Magpie - Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology.

Sue Finch - Sue Finch was born in Kent in 1970 and grew up in Herne Bay. She studied for a B.Ed (Hons) at West Sussex Institute of Education. She has worked in Primary Education since 1993.

Studying for her Masters in Creative Writing with Manchester Metropolitan University gave her the opportunity to work with students and staff at the Writing School. This enabled this collection of work to become a book. ‘Magnifying Glass was published by Black Eyes in 2020. A new collection by Sue is scheduled for publication in 2024.

She lives in Flintshire with her wife and enjoys walking up and around Moel Famau, strolls around Chester Zoo and exploring the coast and countryside of Snowdonia.

8:15 PM - 9:30 PM - Evening Readings from Guest Poets:

Featuring Anna Saunders, Louise Diamant and Pratibha Castle.

Anna Saunders has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’ by The North, ‘a modern myth maker’ by Paul Stephenson, and Tears in the Fence said ofher ‘Anna Saunders’ poetry is reminiscent of Plath – with all its alpha achievement and radiance’. She is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox (Indigo Dreams), Ghosting for Beginners, (Indigo Dreams) and Feverfew (Indigo Dreams). Anna’s new book is The Prohibition of Touch. (Indigo Dreams 2022). She is also the Executive Director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival and works as a creative writing tutor and mentor, communications specialist, journalist, broadcaster and copywriter/editor.

Louise Diamant is a Danish poet, author and speaker. Louise is at home writing in either Danish or English and has published three poetry collections – two in Danish and one in English.

Pratibha Castle is widely published and acknowledged in multiple competitions. Her award-winning debut pamphlet, A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers, was published in 2022, and her second book, Miniskirts in The Waste Land, in 2023. Both are published by Hedgehog Poetry Press.