Local Poets Event

Christopher Horton, Vanessa Lampert, Susan Utting,  Claire Cox, Julie Whiting

(plus short open mic at the beginning/ arrive early to sign up)

Timings: 2:00pm to 4.15pm

Entry: £8 on the door (Cash Only)

 

Christopher Horton

Christopher Horton's poems have appeared in The North, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, The Spectator, New Welsh Review, Ambit, Iota, Magma, The Wolf, Stand, and in anthologies with Penned in the Margins, Broken Sleep Books, tall-lighthouse and Days of Roses. He was a prize winner in the National Poetry Competition and the Bridport Prize. He won first prize in the South Downs Poetry Festival Competition in 2021 and had another poem highly commended in the same year of the competition. He was also commended in the Verve Poetry Festival Competition twice, Highly Commended in the Walter Swan Award and shortlisted for the Canterbury Festival Poetry of the Year Competition. He has written poetry reviews for the London Magazine and Poetry London. He was published by tall-lighthouse press in 2021.

 

Vanessa Lampert 

Vanessa Lampert is an acupuncturist and poet from Oxfordshire. Her first full collection Say It With Me was published by Seren in April 2023. She has an MA in Writing Poetry from Poetry School London and Newcastle University. Since 2019 she has won the Café Writers prize, the Edward Thomas prize, the Sentinel prize and the Ver Poetry prize twice, and come second in the Fish, Yeovil, Oxford Brookes, Ware, and Kent & Sussex prizes. She was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2020 and listed in 2021. Vanessa’s work has recently been published in Magma, The Moth, The Oxford Times and Poetry Wales. She co-edits The Alchemy Spoon, magazine and has taught children in schools and for Learn with Leaders in India. She has run workshops for Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Poetry School London, Hive South Yorkshire, and Stanza groups nationwide. Her pamphlet On Long Loan was published by Live Canon in 2020.

Claire Cox

Born in Hong Kong, Claire now lives and works in Oxfordshire. She is co-founder and Associate Editor at ignition press, winner of the 2021 Michael Marks Publishers’ Award. Claire recently completed a part-time practice-based PhD with Royal Holloway, University of London, studying poetry and disaster. Her poems have been published Ink Sweat & Tears, Magma, Spelt, Envoi, Butcher’s Dog, Anthropocene, Lighthouse and Poetry Salzburg Review. She was one of three winning poets included in Primers: Volume Five (Nine Arches Press, 2020), and the winner of the 2020 Wigtown Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize. 

 

Susan Utting

Susan Utting is the originator of Reading’s long-running, acclaimed Poets’ Café. She has had lots of poems published and won lots of prizes - a favourite was having a poem published on a beer mat. Other prizes and awards include an Arts Council Laureateship, a Poetry Business Prize, The Berkshire Poetry Prize, The Peterloo Prize, and a writing fellowship at Reading’s School of English and American Literature. She has appeared at many festivals, including Aldeburgh, Ledbury, London’s Poetry International and Edinburgh Fringe. Her work has been published in The Times, TLS, The Independent, Forward Book of Poetry, The Poetry Review and Poems on the Underground. Susan taught poetry and creative writing at Reading and Oxford Universities for more than 17 years and now works freelance as a mentor and poetry performer. Following three full collections, her ‘Half the Human Race: New and Selected Poems’ is her latest publication from Two Rivers Press with The Colour of Rain in press for early 2024.

 www.susanutting.com

 

Julie Whiting

Julie Whiting has a MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University. Short listed for Gloucester Prize 2020, commended in the Poetry Society Members Competition 2020, short listed, Buzzwords 2020, special mention in the Spelt Poetry Competition 2021. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Orbis, South, Envoi, The Interpreters House, The High Window, Haibun Journal and anthologised widely. A micro pamphlet What colour is my Brain? by Hedgehog Press was published in November 2022, and her debut collection Folding Time in October 2022.