After our last very successful fundraising poetry night, we are holding another  on Thursday 2nd March in our cafe and orangery. Come and be entertained by three wonderful prizewinning poets:  Louisa Adjoa Parker, Elaine Beckett and Peter Roe and enjoy some refreshments and good company too.

We shall open the doors at 6.30pm for refreshments, and readings will start at 7pm. We shall be serving tea, coffee, canapés and snacks (all included in £10 entrance fee) You won’t need to eat before you come!  BYO wine if you would like to. We don’t have a license to serve alcohol. Soft drinks can be purchased. There will also be an open mic and audience members are welcome to read one or two poems of their own, or a favourite if preferred. The evening will end around 9.30pm.

Buy your ticket here

Or if you are in Beaminster call in to the cafe on our opening days: Sunday, Monday and Tuesday 10.30 till 4.30. Or telephone 01308 281110. Places limited due to capacity.

Proceeds and donations on the night will go to our late son Mark’s fund for Cancer Research UK. Mark began this fund from his hospital bed and raised over £100,000. The fund is still going strong and is now at just over £330,000. Mark died on January 19th , 2017 from malignant melanoma (skin cancer) that had spread throughout his body.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/mark-sims5

 

A little bit about our special guests:

Louisa Adjoa Parker

Photo by Robert Golden

Louisa Adjoa Parker is a writer and poet of English-Ghanaian heritage. Her first poetry collections were published by Cinnamon Press, and her third, How to wear a skin, was published by Indigo Dreams. Her debut short story collection, Stay with me, was published in 2020 by Colenso Books. Her poetry pamphlet, She can still sing, was published by Flipped Eye in June 2021, and she has a coastal memoir forthcoming with Little Toller Books. Louisa’s poetry and prose has been widely published. She has been highly commended by the Forward Prize; twice shortlisted by the Bridport Prize; and her grief poem, Kindness, was commended by the National Poetry Competition 2019. She has performed her work in the south west and beyond and has run many writing workshops.Louisa has written extensively about ethnically diverse history and rural racism, and as well as writing, works as an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion consultant. She is a sought-afterspeaker and trainer on racism, black history, embracing difference, and mental health.

 

Elaine Beckett

Image from Verve Poetry Press

 

Elaine Beckett’s pamphlet Faber New Poets 13 was published by Faber & Faber in 2016. Her first full length collection Sea Creature Regrows Entire Body came out with Verve Poetry Press in 2021. She originally trained as a pianist and composer, later as an arts therapist. Her poems can be found in The Poetry Review, The North, The New European and more recently in Anthropocene.

 

Peter Roe

Peter Roe is a prize winning poet, artistic, autistic, computer geek and technology nerd. He is a former Bard of Dorchester, and host of Apothecary and founding editor of Jawbone Collective. Peter’s poems have been  widely anthologised. Highly commended in 2021 for his collection About Time. His quest for love and his adventures in online dating have been the subject of many poems that appear in his newly released third collection Love Hertz.