Templar Live at the Chequers

Thursday 16^th August 2012  

6:30 for 7:00 pm

If you're still reeling from Olympic fever, here's some choice poetry to soothe you. This month we have the excellent Stephen Wilson heading our line-up. 

Stephen Wilson is a psychiatrist turned poet and literary critic. His first collection, Fluttering Hands, appeared in 2008. A study of the WW1 poet, Isaac Rosenberg, was published in 2010. 

He is the author of six other books: Poetics of the Diaspora, The Cradle of Violence: Essays on Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Literature, The Bloomsbury Book of the Mind, Introducing the Freud Wars and Sigmund Freud. 

In 2010 he was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship to work on a second collection of poems.

He is a trustee of the Poetry Society - which, by my book, means that poetry is in very safe hands.

Yes, the Poetry Society. For those of you who love poetry, this is definitely worth joining. Check out their website if you haven't done so already: 

click here to visit their website

And whilst I'm on my hobby horse, the National Poetry Competition is upon us. 

You have to be in it to win it! 

Handsome prizes, too. But hey, who wants money in these cash-strapped times? 

If you want to enter, click here. 

STOP PRESS! STOP PRESS!

Liz Birchall, one of Back Room Poets' long-standing members, will be reading a selection of her latest work. Liz has been published widely in poetry journals and magazines for a number of years now.

Liz says that after ‘a juvenile progression from useless office girl via more competent market gardener to Wren Aircraft Mechanic’ she found a niche in social work and ultimately academia. This acquainted her with the length and breadth of the UK.  Her memory ‘tastes Pershore plums, climbs Cader Idris, bounds across the Wicklow Hills to Carrantuohil and all my inarticulate love affair with Ireland. There are many delights to write about in contented solitude but my partner’s early death was the first occasion for those elegiac poems that accumulate with advancing years.’

Other guest poets might turn up on the night. Watch this space for further announcements. I'm sure we can persuade the rather good Jim Hopcraft - the Chequers' landlord - to read some of his poems too. If anyone should be dreaming of getting their first collection published, it's him...

Come and enjoy an excellent pint and bring your poems. Our open mic is always popular, so turn up in good time and I'll put you on the list.  If you just want to put your feet up and listen, that's OK too. We like audiences!

The Chequers

Goddards Lane

Chipping Norton

OX7 5NP

The event is free – but donations are gratefully received

and do buy the poets’ books!

For further information phone 07857 273695

or email thepatwinslow@gmail.com