Our next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 10th March 2022, featuring Sonya Smith (poetry), Colin Bell (prose) and Kay Syrad (poetry).
This will be a LIVE event at the John Harvey Tavern in Lewes (upstairs room): please note the start time of 6.30pm.
Tickets £5 (£3 students/unwaged and claiming benefit) available on the door. Still cash only please; we hope to have card payments enabled at our APRIL event.
Books will be for sale on the night (cash only please).
Sonya Smith
Sonya Smith’s first collection, every robin I never quite saw, was published in 2021 by tall lighthouse. From this collection, her poem ‘Telharmonium 1906’ was Poem of the Week in The Telegraph. Previously she has taken part in Poetry South East and Needlewriters anthologies and her 2009 pamphlet old panic undressed was also published by tall lighthouse. Sonya has a daughter, partner and dog and currently lives in Sussex.
Colin Bell
Former television producer-director Colin Bell’s debut poetry collection Remembering Blue was published in 2019 by Ward Wood Publishing. His second poetry collection, Brief Encounters – 100 Fibs, featuring the poems first published in the Fib Review, is scheduled to be published by Ward Wood Publishing. His two published novels are Stephen Dearsley’s Summer of Love (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) longlisted for the Polari Prize 2014 and Blue Notes, Still Frames, (Ward Wood Publishing, 2016). His third novel, Over the Hills is a Long Way Off, will also be published by Ward Wood. A fourth novel is now in its final draft.
Several of his fibs have been set to music as the song cycle, Fibonacci Poems (2017) for tenor voice and piano by American composer Tim Risher. In 2020 he was made Musepie Press’s Featured International Poet and his Fibonacci poetry has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Kay Syrad
Kay Syrad’s publications include two novels and three collections of poetry, of which the latest is What is near (Cinnamon Press, 2021), which has been described as ‘a quiet engagement with moss, air, horizons, […] the human, the non-human and the spaces-between’. Kay was Poetry Editor of the longstanding journal Envoi from 2014-2020, and writes reviews and articles about both poetry and art. Kay has often collaborated with other writers and artists, including the environmental artist Chris Drury (Exchange, Little Toller, 2015), and she is currently half of the composite eco-poet kin’d & kin’d with the artist-performer Clare Whistler. Since 2018, kin’d & kin’d have run a variety of eco-poetry workshops and courses, including at the pioneering rewilded estate in Sussex, Knepp Wildland. Their collaborative work has appeared in journals such as Magma and Finished Creatures, and their newest publication is Wild Correspondings: an eco-poetry source book (Elephant Press, 2021).
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