This event will be held at the Maddermarket in Norwich [Entrance – St John’s Alley NR2 1DR]. Doors will be open at 7pm for a 7.30 start. We are suggesting a donation of £3 for those who attend. The venue includes a bar. It will be possible to sign up for an Open Mic slot when you arrive.
Matt Howard’s first full collection, Gall, was published by The Rialto in 2018 and was winner of the 2018 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize in 2019 and won Best First Collection in the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020. His second collection, Broadlands is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in 2024. After eleven years working for the RSPB, Matt was appointed as Douglas Caster Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds 2021-2023.
Jenny Pagdin’s first collection, The Snow Globe came out with Nine Arches Press in 2024. Her pamphlet Caldbeck was published by Eyewear in 2017, shortlisted for the Mslexia pamphlet competition and listed by the Poetry Book Society. Jenny lives in Norwich with her family, where she works in the voluntary sector. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a BA in English from Oxford University. Her poems have been Highly Commended and shortlisted in the Bridport Prize 2023, and won second prize, highly commended and the Norfolk Prize in the Café Writers Competition. Jenny was also longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation’s 2018 Women’s Poetry Prize. Her work is featured in New Welsh Review, Smoke, Magma, Ambit, Spoonfeed, Wild Court, The Stand, Finished Creatures, Interpreter’s House, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Emma Press and Mum Press anthologies.
Jane Wilkinson is a writer and landscape architect living in Norwich. In 2023 she published her first collection Eve Said (Live Canon). She has won competitions including Live Canon Collection Prize, Aesthetica Poetry Prize, Strokestown International Poetry Prize, Poetry Society’s Hamish Canham Prize and was placed 1st & 2nd Guernsey International Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Portfolio Prize and Alpine Fellowship prize and is published in magazines including Under the Radar, Magma, Lighthouse Journal, The Alchemy Spoon, Envoi, Finished Creatures and anthologies from Emma Press and Live Canon.
Formerly an actor and BBC presenter, Rachel Goodman moved back to her native Norfolk 29 years ago to write and raise a family. Following an MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 2018, she has been shortlisted twice for the Bridport Prize, and published in Magma, Under the Radar, Aesthetica, Alchemy Spoon, Finished Creatures, Fenland Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse, and won or been placed in various international competitions. Her debut pamphlet, Knee to Knee, a collaboration with poet Elvire Roberts, was published in February. They are currently touring a performed reading & workshop of Knee to Knee to literary festivals and events. https://www.dialect.org.uk/bookshop/p/knee-to-knee