PROGRAMME: WEDNESDAY 7 JUNE
We've got a fantastic line-up of poets for you today!
You will find information on the writers and events below.
Performing Poetry With Play
WORKSHOP: 4-6pm.
St Margaret's Church, High St, Rainham, ME8 8AN
Join our facilitator, Naomi Wood, to learn how to develop your performance style. Naomi has an MA in Creative and Critical writing from Sussex, and is an international multi-disciplinary performance artist merging the circus with poetry and storytelling. She teaches creative writing workshops that empower people to cultivate an enriching imaginative and playful practice and perform their work live onstage.
​
A lively and engaging workshop where people will learn how to harness vulnerability and individuality to perform boldly onstage. It will be relaxed and fun with writing exercises and teaching (so do bring pen and paper!)
Hélène Cixous implies when we follow the impulse to create, to write, we 'resist death (and) make trouble'. This workshop will be about learning to approach writing and performance with playfulness.
Refreshments will be available to purchase.
Free, just turn up.
St Margaret's Church is fully accessible.
Nearest bus stop: Rainham precinct
Helen Seymour
POETRY: 7-7.25pm.
St Margaret's Church, High St, Rainham, ME8 8AN
Helen Seymour is a Spoken-Word-Artist-Human-Poet-Performance-Writer-Person. She has written and performed two spoken word/theatre/comedy shows across the UK, both of which were directed by Hannah Silva. 'Helen Highwater' received R&D funding from Arts Council England in 2019, and was performed at the Southbank Centre the same year. Helen’s first show 'To Helen Back' also secured R&D funding from ACE and went on to tour with house and Creative Arts East to 25 venues in total. 'To Helen Back' was nominated for New Writing South’s Best New Play at Brighton Fringe 2017. Helen won Gold Award in the Creative Future Literacy Awards 2017 for her poem 'Crack' and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. She is also disabled and proud to be contributing to a more diverse arts sector.
Refreshments will be available to purchase.
Free, just turn up.
St Margaret's Church is fully accessible.
Nearest bus stop: Rainham precinct
Sascha Aurora Akhtar
POETRY: 7.30-8pm.
St Margaret's Church, High St, Rainham, ME8 8AN
Sascha Aurora Akhtar is a poet of the liminal – someone for whom all is magic. 'The Grimoire of Grimalkin', published in 2007 was greeted as “a contemporary masterpiece”, with The Guardian naming Akhtar one of the top twelve poets to watch. She considers herself a 'Pakistani-British-American: something reflected in the linguistic registers in her work. Her first short story collection is 'Of Necessity And Wanting'. Her first book of translations of feminist fiction by writer Hijab Imtiaz has just been published by Oxford University Press (India). Sascha's 'Poems For Eliot', from the book #LoveLikeBlood, was named number one poem of the past five years by Poetry Wales in the summer of 2019.
​
Refreshments will be available to purchase.
Free, just turn up.
St Margaret's Church is fully accessible.
Nearest bus stop: Rainham precinct
Photo of Sascha at Welcome to Cloisterham 2022, by Nikki Price.
John McCullough
POETRY: 8.10-8.50pm.
St Margaret's Church, High St, Rainham, ME8 8AN
We are happy to welcome poet John McCullough back to Medway. (John is pictured at Welcome to Cloisterham last year, photo by Nikki Price!)
​
John McCullough lives in Hove on the south coast of England. His first collection, 'The Frost Fairs', won the Polari First Book Prize in 2012 and was a Book of the Year in The Independent as well as a summer read in The Observer. His collection, 'Reckless Paper Birds', published by Penned in the Margins and shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2019, focuses on vulnerability and the human body. It won John the coveted Hawthornden Prize in 2020.
​
His most recent collection, 'Panic Response' was named as one of The Times' notable new poetry books 2022, and his poem, 'Flower of Sulphur' was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for best single poem 2021.
​
Refreshments will be available to purchase.
Free, just turn up.
St Margaret's Church is fully accessible.
Nearest bus stop: Rainham precinct
Workshop: How to create fictional characters
WORKSHOP: 6.30-8.30pm.
Store 104, 104 High Street Rochester, ME1 1JT
Workshop with Thomas McMullan, on creating characters in fiction.
​
Thomas McMullan is a writer, critic and journalist. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Observer, The TLS, Sight & Sound, Frieze, New Statesman, Lighthouse, 3:AM Magazine, Minor Literature[s], The Stockholm Review and Cours de Poétique. He has also been featured in Best British Short Stories, and has been published internationally, in translation. He was a member of The Royal Court Young Writers Programme and has had plays produced at The ICA, The Southwark Playhouse, The V&A and The British Museum, and has worked with visual artists in London, Amsterdam and Beijing.
His first novel 'The Last Good Man' was published by Bloomsbury in 2020.
​
Free - book to secure your place.
Drop into Store 104 to book, or email hello@store104.co.uk
As an historic building, Store 104 is not accessible to wheelchairs