BATH POETRY WORKS 

 

INAUGURAL POETRY EVENING

was held at

St James Wine Vaults, Bath

on Friday April 25th, 2014

 

Readers were:

Mohan Rana, Hilda Sheehan,

Matthew Paul, Gale Burns,

Louis Hawkins, A.R.Paul

 

Biographies:

 

Matthew Paul was shortlisted for the 2013 Poetry School/Pighog Press pamphlet competition and is one of the UK's leading exponents of haiku. His collection, The Regulars, was published in 2007.

 

Mohan Rana was born in Delhi. His reputation as a diaspora poet has grown with each book; and is acknowledged as one of the foremost Hindi poet outside of India. He has published seven poetry collections in Hindi in India and a bilingual chapbook, ‘Poems’, translated from Hindi by Bernard O'Donoghue and Lucy Rosenstein, published by the Poetry Translation Centre, London. This Chapbook was world literature tour recommendation in the Guardian in 2011.

 

Gale Burns is a writer in residence at both the Kingston Writing School, Kingston University London, and Sydenham Arts Festival. He convenes the well-regarded Shuffle poetry series in London, and was a 2012 Hawthornden Fellow. His work has been translated into French and Slovenian. www.galeburns.co.uk

 

Hilda Sheehan's first collection, 'The Night My Sister Went to Hollywood' was published 2013 by Cultured Llama Press and a pamphlet, 'Frances and Martine' is due out in August 2014 from Dancing Girl Press in Chicago. Her poems are widely published in magazines and anthologies including The Rialto, Shearsman, Poetry Salzburg Review, Tears in the Fence, and The Interpreters House.

- 'A superstar of the poetry world! Her work is surreal, brilliant and very darkly funny.' Anna Saunders, Cheltenham Poetry Festival.

- “Like a firework set off in the heart of the culture’s kitchen”. William Bedford in Acumen

 

Louis Hawkins’ work is a collaboration between poetry and painting, a bridge between the abstract and improvisational qualities of both art forms. His poetry is a response to those experiences and encounters in life where there is no script, signpost or map. They revel in the prosaic, the small gifts and dramas discovered in the random. They record the frequent and often confounding return journeys between dissonance and consonance. His first collection ‘The Early Hours’ was published in 1981 and he has since been published widely in magazines including Chocolate News, Vortex and The Poetry Can. He is a resident artist at Bath Artist Studios.