An Evening with The Highgate Poets

Friday, 12th June at 7.45 pm

Aberystwyth Arts Centre in conjunction with the Word Distillery Poets invite you to an evening with the Highgate Poets.

The Highgate Poets are a group of North London published poets founded in 1977 and currently touring Mid Wales. Their 27th anthology entitled The Space it Might Take is just out. The evening will include an open mic slot for local poets to read with the Highgate Poets. Come half an hour early if you would like a place on the open mic!

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We were treated to a great night of poetry on March 11th at Aberystwyth Art Centre's Chinwag night with guest poet Chris Kinsey and various 'Open Mic' readers, hosted by the Word Distillery. Chris entertained and inspired us all with a selection of poetry from her three books (Kung Fu Lullabies, Cure for a Crooked Smile and Swarf) as well as some new poems. She commented that it was the best open mic she had been to, with good quality poetry and no doggerel!



                                                              Chris Kinsey

Members of the Word Distillery will be performing a Homage to the Great War Poets on April 15th. at the Arts Centre and later on in the year we'll be reading with The Highgate Poets, date to be decided.

As it's the 10th anniversary of the formation of the group, we decided to produce an anthology of the work of current members which will hopefully be ready in the autumn.

The next Open Mic will be sometime in May - so, plenty going on!

No Yawning Stare - Performance

Wed. 22nd Oct/ Mercher 22 Hydref 7.45 pm Aberystwyth Arts Centre

The Word Distillery - ‘No Yawning Stares’

In conjunction with the exhibition of visual poetry 'A Bird Flew By' (Cafe Gallery) The Word Distillery Poets with guest Dylan Jones present an evening of verse. Hosted by Nigel Humphreys it embraces the themes of wildlife and the countryside. (The title is borrowed from 'Thrushes' by Ted Hughes).

Photos and write-up of the Shelley performance by Mike Smith

If you'd like to read about the Shelley performance by participant Mike Smith, along with photos, click here to access his website: Michael Dante

Homage to Shelley

A reminder that the Homage to Shelley performance is tonight, Wednesday 26th March, at 7.45 pm in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre. You'll hear about Shelley's colourful life and hear some of his best poems concluding with The Mask of Anarchy. Not to be missed!

Round-up of news

It's the last day of the year and I thought I'd just catch up on Word Distillery news before we set sail for 2014.

Of Moment Book Launch

The Aberyswyth launch of Nigel Humphreys' third book Of Moment was an enjoyable event. It was very well attended and Nigel very generously gave the floor to three writers from his arts centre based poetry class who have since been published: Caroline Stockford, Heather Williams and Caroline Oakley. Their readings were excellent and gave variety to the evening.

Heather Williams

Nigel then read poems from the book - including my favourite red kite which begins:

its moment is
the scimitar unsheathed

the instant when the sun
ignites the tyrant's blade

Michael Dembinski's comments on the previous collection The Flavour of Parallel apply just as much to this new book, which celebrates the universe as both scientific and spiritual with "a memorable turn of phrase, a mind restless for a new understanding of our reality through metaphor".

Chinwag

The Chinwag open mic event with guest readers has been successfully taken over from Rhian Edwards, erstwhile poet in residence at the arts centre, by Word Distillery member Mike Smith. The last event on 4th December had David Subacchi and Ken Jones as the guest readers. More Chinwags are scheduled for 2014 on January 15th and March 6th - see the sidebar for details. If you have five minutes of material you would like to share or road-test with an audience then come along and sign up with Mike at 7pm before the event starts.

The Word Distillery on YouTube

Thanks to Sarah Smith (big thanks, Sarah!) who has been videoing Word Distillery performances (as well as working behind the scenes on Chinwag events), you can now watch some of the members performing at the Lantern Lit in Tywyn.

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All in all it's been a successful year for The Word Distillery with new members, new performances and new venues. In 2014 there will be more Chinwag events throughout the year, a tribute to Shelley on March 26th and more performances (dates yet to be decided) in Aberystwyth and London.

Finally a big thank you to Aberystwyth Arts Centre which has provided support and space for the poetry community. It has become a place of nurturing and encouragement for local poets and I'm happy to say that poetry is thriving in Aberystwyth. We sincerely hope that the cuts to funding in 2014 won't affect that.

Of Moment - book launch

Just a reminder of the launch of Nigel's Humphrey's third book of poetry Of Moment from Arbor Vitae press at the Russkiy Mir bookshop. For details see the sidebar.

If you can, do go along to share in this momentous occasion - have your book signed and taste some Russian sweet cake and wine  (or possibly cider)!