Nigel Jarrett will be joining John Barnie and Simone Mansell Broome in reading from his newest poetry collection, Gwyriad, newly published by Cockatrice Books, at the famous Poetry Upstairs readings at the Melville Centre for the Arts, Abergavenny, on Tuesday 30th April at 7pm. There will be an entry fee of £5.
John Barnie was born and raised in Abergavenny. He taught at Copenhagen University (1969-82), and was editor of the cultural magazine Planet: The Welsh Internationalist (1990-2006). A poet and essayist, his latest books are Tsunami Days (essays) and Dunes of Cwm Rheidol (poems). He is also a blues guitarist and has played in a number of bands, including Y Bechgyn Drwg/The Bad Boys with Twm Morys, Iwan Llwyd and Nigel Jenkins.
Simone Mansell Broome is a Welsh-born writer. She studied English with American Studies at Sussex University, qualified both as a teacher of Speech and Drama and of EFL Simone’s poems have been read on Radio 4, including BBC’s ‘Poetry Please’, ITV and Radio Wales. Fifty of Simone’s poems were translated into Romanian in 2020 as part of a Bucharest University M.A. dissertation. She has published three full collections of poetry.
Nigel Jarrett is the author of eight books. His first poetry collection, Miners At The Quarry Pool, was published by Parthian, and this year Cockatrice Books published his second poetry collection, Gwyriad. He is a winner of the Rhys Davies Prize for short fiction and the inaugural Templar Shorts Prize, reviews poetry for Acumen magazine and also writes for Jazz Journal (a regular column called Count Me In), Wales Arts Review.
Over the past twenty years, Poetry Upstairs has hosted Carol Ann Duffy, Benjamin Zephaniah, Lee Harwood, Ian McMillan, poets from America, Canada, Australia and Europe, as well as Menna Elfyn, Peter Finch, and others.