Poetry Reading and Light-hearted Talk at Sladers Yard, Thursday, 19th June, 7.30pm.
Poets Kit Wright, Neil Rollinson and Simon Rae with Alex Martin and David Inshaw: Cricket at Little Bredy
Tickets are £7.50 from Sladers Yard to include a free glass of wine. Tel: 01308 459511. Book now!!
For many years a team of poets, writers and the painter David Inshaw have been coming together annually to play cricket at the magical cricket pitch at Littlebredy, just a few miles from Bridport. David Inshaw has painted three acclaimed paintings of the team playing there. Now the poets have written poems, Alex Martin has written an introduction and David Inshaw has made a series of 21 beautiful little etchings which are being exhibited at Sladers Yard until July 13. A very highly regarded Italian printer is making them into an artist's book.
On June 19th we have a chance to join this talented group and hear them read their work and give a talk about what this very special place in Dorset means to them. Enjoy a glass of wine and look at the etchings, together with The Cricket Game III by David Inshaw which has been kindly lent by Sir Philip Williams the owner of Littlebredy cricket pitch.
We are proud to present three leading English poets:
KIT WRIGHT (b. 1944) is the author of more than twenty-five books, for both adults and children, and the winner of awards including an Arts Council Writers' Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award and (jointly) the Heinemann Award. After a scholarship to Oxford, he worked as a lecturer in Canada, then returned to England and a position in the Poetry Society. He is currently a full-time writer.
' There isn't a single flat poem in Kit Wright's new collection… he's funny too… clever, nimble and moving. Above all, his poetic generosity refuses to consider serious subjects as out of bounds just because he's writing for a young audience." Douglas Dunn, Evening Standard on Cat Among the Pigeons
"Kit Wright relishes words' sounds and meanings, playing with language as only one who knows his craft can. He exploits its ambiguity and its exactness, satisfying poetry lovers of all ages." TES on Great Snakes
"When I find a collection as funny and as sparkling as this, I don't tell a soul. I hide it away in my jacket pocket and wait with a knowing smile for the next wet Friday afternoon." Books For Keeps on Great Snakes
NEIL ROLLINSON is the author of three collections of poems all published by Jonathan Cape: A Spillage of Mercury (1996), Spanish Fly (2001) and Demolition (2007).
'Rollinson is a deeply self-conscious writer with an assured tehcnique…Few male poets have written about their physical lives… with such innocent relish.' Carol Rumens, Poetry London.
SIMON RAE is a British poet, broadcaster, biographer and playwright who runs the Top Edge Productions theatre company. He won the Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition in 1999 and has also been awarded an Eric Gregory Award and a Southern Arts Literature Bursary and held Royal Literary Fund fellowships at Oxford Brookes and Warwick Universities. His play Grass won a Fringe Highlight award in 2002.
Rae presented Radio 4's Poetry Please for five years and wrote a regular topical poem for the Saturday Guardian for ten years. His most recent book of poems was Gift Horses, published in 2006 by Enitharmon Press.
He has written a biography of the cricketer: W.G.Grace: A Life (Faber, 1998).