The Gloucestershire Poetry Society presents our regular online event, 'Crafty Crows', hosted by Josephine Lay, begins the new year, on Wednesday 6th January 2021, from 7.00pm until 9.00pm, with David Clarke & Catherine Baker, plus open-mic. Via Zoom (Technical stuff by Jason Conway)
This is a Ticketed Event, get your free ticket here,
https://helmtickets.com/events/6737/crafty-crows-online-poetry-david-clarke-cathy-baker-plus-open-mic
To enter the event, just scan the event link into your browser...
To reserve an open-mic slot for this event, please email, craftycrows2020@yahoo.com (first come, first served). Open-mic slots will be 5 minutes max. (please stick to this, as we don't want to have to cut people off). Please be aware that Crafty Crows is recorded, and subsequently posted via youtube...
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David Clarke was born in Lincolnshire and now lives in Gloucestershire. After giving up on writing for many years, he returned to poetry in 2009 and has since had poems published in a variety of magazines and on-line journals, including Iota, Anon, New Walk, Magma, Tears in the Fence, Poetry Salzburg Review and Bare Fiction.
His pamphlet Gaud was one of the winners of the Flarestack Poets Pamphlet Competition in 2012 and it went on to win the Michael Marks Award in 2013.
His first full collection, Arc, was published by Nine Arches Press in September 2015.
His second collection, The Europeans. Simultaneously close to home and looking outward beyond these shores, these wry and perceptive poems revel with form and encompass journeys, ideas of nationhood and national identity, and the optimism of a time when Europe and the UK enjoyed a quite different entente cordiale. They are a warning against nostalgia, a lucid and prescient exploration of how we see ourselves and how we are seen. "A document for our times. A protest against bigotry and smuggery. A thesis for open borders and equality. In its cumulative effect, The Europeans is a comparative cultural analysis, a social satire and political commentary, a portrait of us and them, here and there, home and away." Paul Stephenson "Clarke's authoritative new collection offers profound pleasures, and deepening regrets, in a poetic continent where every reader must confront 'your own untruth'. The Europeans is certainly a book for the present. It is also a book for our uncertain future." - Alison Brackenbury "It includes the best gathering of found Brexit similes I expect to see in my lifetime, and a poem on stately homes that needs to be broadcast before every re-run of Downton Abbey. With targeted humour, an eye for the mobile and the sedentary, repurposing the mundane, David Clarke takes us to estates of all kinds, to both Leeds Central and Milano Centrale."- Alistair Noon
He has been invited to perform my work at Wenlock Poetry Festival, Birmingham Literature Festival, Buzzwords (Cheltenham), Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Polari Literary Salon (South Bank Centre), the Poetry Café (London), Birmingham City University, Poetry Bites (Birmingham) and Swindon Poetry Festival, among others.
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Catherine Baker has been published by Stand, Snakeskin, Atrium and Amaryllis. She was highly commended in Prole Poet Laureate competition 2020. She has poems in anthologies including Poetry from Gloucestershire, Ways to Peace and Pandemic Poetry. In the GWN poetry competition she was runner up in 2018 and highly commended in 2020.