Author: GBJM_57

Community Poem January 2024

Everyone say glove
I really dropped the ball today – wonder if anyone will notice
I am flippantly tossing tables as the barman pours another whiskey shot – sing to me
Do you like guacamole? I am scaling furniture when the beds break
I’m carbon dating my journals
Mr Blobby, dead at 53
Paul’s being a poopy poop
Mouldy bananas
Bodies of water
Paul loves wrestling
Not very relatable is it
My glasses are a shield and I can’t take them off
After sixteen years of appropriate onstage attire
the Satellite team finally stopped mentioning the nudity rule
A rainbow flag runs up the stairs

*******************************

Cold nights drawing in reflected in dark waters
We are finger bitten
Afloat in a sea of memories
I am out of words. I have scraped the jar clean,
licked the lid, and sit here full and silent.

Jemima Hughes Headliner SOL Feb 2024

Jemima Hughes is a multi slam winning performance poet who will sweep you up and drag you through the “mindfield” of the unorthodox, swiftly spinning it into the ordinary. She brings you into the storm, pauses for breaks in the clouds, and sits with you in the aftermath to discuss how to rebuild. Jemima’s debut poetry collection ‘Unorthodox’, published with Verve Poetry Press in 2020, challenges perceptions of living with sexual trauma and mental health issues through personal experiences. Her new 2023 collection ‘Into The Ordinary’ aims to change perspectives on how we can make the world a more accepting, understanding and comfortable place for those living with these experiences. 

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Community Poem November 2023

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Community poem November 2023

Darkness on the quay


Some mornings your room is a rain cloud
My old boots are letting the puddles in
The pillow cradles my skull and forms a crucible for my dreams
Are we nearly dead yet?
Darkness on the quay
Ghost-gulls fly and lights are reflected in the water
The pre-loved bin bags of Halloween rustle ominously in the gloaming
First time jitters once again
Her dress was made of music
Sparkling lights water my eyes
The boat turned poets into angels with bright halos
Inspiration, community, friendships, and smiles. All afloat on this boat.


Out of context seagulls (a one-way conversation with Shrek)


SHREK! You crushed the last piece of my shattered heart.
Little did you know you lost a strong girl.
I’d pay £1,200 for a new mic stand
or an exorcist
and I still think contactless is magic.
SHREK! There’s an out-of-context seagull troubling the roof of an urban semi.
My cat is awesome. Speak your truth, Eric!
The fun is in the egg TOMATOES.
MIC DROP

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Jonny Fluffypunk January 24th 2024

Stand-up poet and lo-fi theatremaker Jonny Fluffypunk has been dragging his art around the UK and occasionally beyond for over 25 years, deafly fusing bittersweet autobiography, disillusionment and wonder into an act that has established him as a firm favourite at gigs, festivals and housing benefit offices everywhere. He has two volumes of poems, micro-fictions and threadbare philosophy published by Burning Eye, and his solo ‘no-fi’ stand-up spoken word theatre shows,
including his latest, If We Just Keep Going, We Will Get There in the End, have toured extensively around theatres, pubs, garden sheds, summer houses, record shops and Britain’s other ad-hoc performance spaces in a blatant championing of homespun DIY culture. When not performing, Jonny runs workshops, putting shapes and colours into the minds of young and old alike. He’s a crucial third of Hip Yak Poetry Shack, ‘the south west’s favourite pop-up poetry event’, and also runs Mr Fluffypunk’s Penny Gaff, an alternative cabaret in his adopted home town of Stroud.

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Community poem October 2023

They are all in the Vortex

I live in a dustbin littered with gold
You can tell its art-my Grandfather said- because there are no people in it
I was watching Line of Duty

Drop, beat, drop, beat, drop

Time flies
The beautiful smallness you feel when gazing up at the sky and realising, somewhere
up there, is a boat that never moves
Its behind you

Drop, beat, drop, beat, drop

Love is a verb
Gravy
Clit
Ramen
Telling talk from mutter is like telling Stork from butter

Drop, beat, drop, beat, drop

On the bad days, please read this
Your legacy is not yours-
I think about profiting from your death more than I probably should

Lou Reed- As I entered a lock on my Satellite of Love !!! narrow boat xx
I am begging Mars to write a line, I tell them, the poem needs them, he needs you
satellite circling a satellite of love.

LOOK UP!

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Kat Lyons

Kat is a Bristol-based writer and performer, working mainly in the field of spoken word poetry. They are the curent Bristol City Poet (2022-2024) and were nominated for the Jerwood Poetry in Performance Award 2022. Kat has performed at poetry events and festivals across the UK, including WOMAD, Shambala, Lyra: Bristol Poetry Festival 2020 and the Eden Project. Their poetry has been featured in Under the Radar, Ink Sweat & Tears and Bath Magg and their debut collection Love Beneath the Nails is published by Verve Poetry Press. Kat has recently finished their UK tour of Dry Season – a multi-year spoken word theatre show/project exploring age, identity and menopause.

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Jenny Mitchell. SOL Headliner October 2023

Jenny Mitchell won the Gregory O’Donoghue Prize 2023 for a single poem, and the Poetry
Book Awards 2021 for her second collection, Map of a Plantation, which is on the syllabus at
Manchester Metropolitan University.

The prize-winning debut collection, Her Lost
Language, is One of 44 Poetry Books for 2019 (Poetry Wales), and her latest collection,
Resurrection of a Black Man, contains three prize-winning poems and is featured on the US
podcast Poetry Unbound.

She’s won numerous competitions, is widely-published and has performed at the Houses of Parliament. Her latest publication is the pamphlet shared with Zoë Brigley and Roy McFarlane called Family Name.

Her Lost Language
Map of a Plantation
Resurrection of a Black Man

Community Poem September 2023

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who often thought well then (……………NO, NO I’m not going there!)

Peace to all here tonight
The whole world is in our hands
Newspapers all tell us the Earth is dying, but really its hoping and sighing.
Light-hearted skipping souls
This paper is sodden as is my heart
Whilst cultivating exclusively coloured socks just for you.

The Zebra’s tonsils swung like a metronome click-clacking-
And, what’s more, the gull that shat on my head, on the way to the show, did not stop me from
reading a poem.
We bade farewell, with a bourgeois bon soir- I blew a kiss, it missed!

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Community poem July 2023

Poets who can’t count also seem to have no sense of proportion as 2 tiny poems GROW…… and require lengthy introductions!!!

One Day I will write something clever, but until then……
carry on, there is plenty of time.
Thankfully in the meantime, I like beans, purple edibles
and Blue Duck eggs!

I used to be indecisive but……..
now I’m not so sure
It’s everything and nothing-
I know nothing and that’s something ha ha.

Sorry about the curtain
with me draped head to toe in full length lammentta
the dandelion forgot the time, knowing
Unity in the community, presents an opportunity.

On waking I found I’d lost my identity
And yet…..we thrust onward….
Even the birds are ambivalent as they carve their way through air
made solid with industrial smoke and smell.

Colin is dead, with his fuzzy camel face.
So sad…….., but I am valued, I am love.
You ask if I’m emotional?
Fuck yeah!

Jemma Hathaway 27th September 2023, on board The John Sebastian Lightship

Jemma Hathaway. Photo by Sam Cavender/@samsnapsalot

Jemma Hathaway likes to put words next to one another and see if they hit it off. Her poems have been featured on BBC Radio Bristol, BBC iPlayer and she was the 2020 Hammer & Tongue slam champion for Bristol. She has supported Joelle Taylor, performed at the Royal Albert Hall and appeared on Sky Arts Life & Rhymes hosted by Benjamin Zephaniah. She is a Button Poetry Short Form contest winner and in 2021 self-published her first poetry pamphlet, January.

Last year she won the Hip Yak Poetry Shack slam at Frome Festival and performed her first festival set at WOMAD and this year she has been lucky enough to support Roger McGough.

Her poems are a sticky dancefloor for the ongoing dance-off between her head and her heart. She hopes you like her moves. She is currently working on her first full collection.

Photo by:

Sam Cavender/@samsnapsalot