Not-for-profit literary event Words on Tap is back on April 25th following a month-and-a-half break from the Leeds spoken word scene. This month’s poets are respectively laden with notable prizes and awards, so you will not want to miss readings from Michael Brown, John Newsham, Adam Strickson and Tom Weir – see below for more info. There’ll be the usual open-mic section (no more than three minutes a slot!) and admission is still completely FREE. See you there at 7.30pm.
Adam Strickson is a theatre director, sculptor, poet, librettist, and Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds, where he has taught many successful young poets and scriptwriters from Yorkshire, the North West and India! His first collection, An Indian Rug Surprised by Snow, came out in 2005. His second, Tear up the lace, in 2011. He was lead artist for the imove Olympic cultural project Wingbeats, and a book of his poems and libretti for this project was published by Valley Press in December 2012. He is currently artist in residence in Dewsbury Community Park for the Yorkshire Festival, creating bird sculptures and bird poems in the woods, fields and sunshine of 2014. Free poetry posters from this work will be available at Words on Tap. (pic: Jonty Wilde)
Michael Brown’s new pamphlet, Undersong, will be published by Eyewear in June 2014.
His poetry has most recently been published in Other Poetry, Black Light Engine Room and the North (including the forthcoming issue 52).
In 2014 he won the Untold London Brazen Valentine Competition with his poem , From Hungerford Bridge, Looking East and he was placed third and separately commended in Sentinel’s April 2014 competition with his poems Someone and Above Meadowhall,Sheffield. He was also longlisted for the South Bank Poetry Competition and the York Poetry Prize in 2014.
Previously, he has been selected for Advanced Arvon with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke (2013) at Moniack Mhor and an earlier pamphlet Semi Detached was published by Perjink, in 2010. He completed an MA in Creative Writing (poetry) under the tutelage of Sean O’ Brien in 2009 and in the same year was shortlisted for the inaugural Basil Bunting Award.
He lives in Middlesbrough and works as a full time Head of English in a school.
John Newsham is a 24 year old writer from Bradford. His poem ‘Full Time’ has been published in the 2012 Grist Anthology of New Poetry. In 2011 a selection of his poetry won a Dorothy Rosenberg Memorial Prize, awarded to ‘young poets with unusual promise’. He is also the organiser of the North Star poetry night in Bradford and currently lives in West Yorkshire.
Tom Weir was born in 1980 and grew up in a small village outside Cambridge. After a brief spell putting up tents in France, he went to Barcelona to train to be an English teacher, a job which has since taken him around much of Europe and South East Asia.
His years working abroad have provided a great deal of inspiration for his writing, as have the periods he spent living in remote parts of the English countryside: his poems often pay homage to his experiences during these times.
He has a 1st class degree in Creative Arts from Bath Spa University, and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the same university.
His pamphlet, The Outsider, won this year’s Templar IOTA Shots competition and is out in May. His work has appeared in various magazines, including Stand, Staple and The Frogmore Papers and was also featured in the anthology: ‘Lung Jazz, Young British Poets for Oxfam’. Apart from travelling and poetry, his other real passion is AFC Wimbledon, though he has not yet managed to write a poem about them.
Words on Tap 