Wordsmiths & Co

Contact: mail@ninearchespress.com

In this regular monthly series, poets come together in a celebration of all things spoken, sharing secrets and tales in an intimate performance space.

If you are not familiar with the names then this is your chance to witness local, national and international poets sharing stories and opinions as they engage in no-holds-barred conversation.


Mon 17 Jun Jo will be with Lorna Meehan, Matt Merritt, David Morley & Luke Wright.

Lorna Meehan is an actor, theatre practitioner and playwright and has been performing poetry for about ten years. She was part of Birmingham collective New October Poets and toured various festivals, including Glastonbury. She has also worked with Apples and Snakes, both as a performer and workshop facilitator. Her poetry ranges from comic ranting to mellow introspection and she has recently been honing her Slam skills. Lorna occasional performs as her alter ego, monosyllabic American teenager Melinda Deathgoth, who recently subjected London audiences at Jawdance to her particular brand of poetic misery. She is currently part of the Decandant Poetry Diva’s who will be performing at Ledbury Poetry Festival later this year.



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Matt Merritt is a poet and wildlife journalist from Leicester. His third collection, The Elephant Tests, is forthcoming from Nine Arches, and previous publications are hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica (Nine Arches, 2010), Troy Town (Arrowhead, 2008), and Making The Most Of The Light (HappenStance, 2005). He blogs at polyolbion.blogspot.co.uk



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David Morley’s “The Gypsy and the Poet” is due from Carcanet Press in August followed next year by “Biographies of Birds and Flowers: Selected Poems”. He writes for The Guardian and Poetry Review. He judged the 2013 T.S. Eliot Prize and is judging this year’s Foyles Young Poets Award.



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Luke Wright has been described as “the best young performance poet around,” by The Observer. He writes bawdy bar room ballads about Westminster rogues and small town tragedies. His poetry stage shows have toured the world. His seventh, Essex Lion, debuts this summer at The Assembly in Edinburgh. His debut collection, Mondeo Man, was published this year to five star reviews. The Huffington Post declared it to be: “a riot of cheek, giggles, boobs, tears and Facebook.” He co-curates The Spoken Word Arena at Latitude, one of the country’s biggest poetry events.

Price: £5.50

Time: 7:45pm