WORCESTER: Script Haven

Wednesday 28th August, 2024

7:00pm

Event information

Leading voices from Offa's Press take over Script Haven for the evening. Poetry readings followed by Q&A and an opportunity to socialise with leading poets and their publisher.

Simon Fletcher, born in the Wyre Forest, Worcestershire, has performed across Britain and in Pakistan & Norway. He’s read his poetry on BBC Radio Shropshire & the BBC Asian Network. He runs poetry writing workshops in green spaces/ places and MCs monthly live literature events in Ironbridge and Wolverhampton. He has been a ‘Poet on Loan’ in West Midlands libraries. He’s had 7 collections published to date including Wild Orchids, 2023, that contains work ‘commended’ in the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year Awards, 2022. This year he’s been nominated for the Forward Prize. Manager of Offa's Press.

Kuli Kohli is Poet Laureate of Wolverhampton and an enthusiastic member of the RSPB. She has battled with mild cerebral palsy and achieved a great deal in her life as council worker, mother and writer. Her appearances on BBC’s ‘Sunday Live’ and ‘Poetry, Please!’ drew national attention. Her Patchwork and A Wonder Woman are both published by Offa’s Press. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Wolverhampton in 2022 and this March a photograph of her was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.

Michael W. Thomas co-edited The Poetry of Worcestershire with Simon Fletcher for Offa’s Press in 2019. His poetry pamphlet Under Smoky Light (also published by Offa's Press) followed in 2020. 'Sing Ho! Stout Cortez': Novellas and Stories was published in 2021 by Black Pear Press. He reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. For several years he was poet-in-residence at the Robert Frost Festival, Key West, Florida. He was long-listed in the National Poetry competition, 2022, and also long-listed and short-listed for the Indigo Dreams Spring Poetry Prize, 2023.