Tag: John Sebastian Lightship

Community Poem March 2025

Each hand gestures to its own goblin

Well there it is…
Friends are friends for just a season-
Who the fuck is Alan?!
8000 days of pain, just you left,
whatever you do don’t anger the old Gods!!!
Lord drug my mind,
your salad won’t save you
I like words and CHOCOLATE!

Brexit worked so well,
I didn’t mean the previous line!
eeny meeny miney bollocks
Piss, liquid of life
It’s all a little to the left-
Urine, liquor of my soul,
each hand gestures to its own goblin
Birds’ nests from breakage
wee wee, source of my joy!

I want to dance naked under the disco ball
plush sofas, kush loafers, a quest for the best-
my parents voted me ‘Worlds best organ doner!’
They sent her in a Pringles can
with a couple dreamies love for the road
cinnamon cream cuts cinema kindly to taste,
soft laughing caking in sick time ‘cough’

I bought my car off vinted for €2.50,
one day I came home at lunch time and I heard a funny noise,
why do you keep talking about your hard wood floors
and why are socks so hard?
your mom.

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Satellite of Love Presents: Poetry Film Night

Tuesday 20th May 2025

On board the John Sebastian Lightship

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May’s Poetry Film Club will feature Sarah Tremlett (MPhil, FRSA, leading, British, prize-winning poetry filmmaker, poet, artist and theorist, and editor of Liberated Words online) reading from and talking about her new publication, and showing a poetry film from it.

Her commissioned poetic memoir Horse-Woman (Basic Bruegel Editions, Canada, April, 2025) relates to a traumatic period earlier in her life when she was working as a fashion model whilst painting and writing in a bohemian London bedsit. As an emotionally isolated child, with elderly parents, and an inability to verbalise, Sarah Tremlett was given a young horse to look after, which ultimately was sold against her wishes. Following her animal empathy and bonding, in this ‘stream of consciousness’ account of events, Sarah’s psyche creates a mythical, ‘otherkin’ horse persona which protects and interweaves with her experiences in the fashion world.

The book contains paintings from the time, including Horse-Woman, and the cover Cowboy Riding the Horse of the World to Death was a response to how London’s poetic decay was being taken over by developers. A parallel to ‘Women coming and going in a room’ is referred to from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, but with ambiguous connotations, since it was one of the A-level texts that ended one part of her life. The prologue ‘Flight’ is also a poetry film, centred on her early relationship with her mother. 

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Satellite of Love Hosts: Poetry Film Club

On Board The John Sebastian Lightship

Tuesday 18th March. Doors 7pm Screening 7.30pm

March’s Poetry Film Club, on the day after St Patrick’s Day, is a Celtic Special! We will be looking at poetry films made by filmmakers from Wales, Ireland and Scotland. 

There will be films in the Welsh language presented by Steffan Phillips, poetry film from Ireland by Grace Wells, Pat Boran, Colm Scully and James Kelly, and a selection of films from Scotland by Barry Hollow, Steven Smart and Rachel McCrum.

Our discussion will be how different areas of the UK respond to the creation of poetry film and whether or not there is a ‘Celtic’ style of poetry film.

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Satellite of Love Hosts: Poetry Film Club

January 14th 7pm on the John Sebastian Lightship

New Year. New Makers. New approaches. This month’s poetry film club showcases some new poetry film makers, Tara Arkle and Stacey Pottinger from Bath Spa University. We will also be screening some films in the Welsh language.

As usual there will be plenty of opportunities for discussion and sharing.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions

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Satellite of Laughs: January 22nd 2025

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Our headliner this month: Tim Munson on the Lightship

Support: Samuel L Cohen

Doors open 7pm. Open mic starts 7.30pm

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Tim munson

Tim Munson regularly performs in and around the seedy under belly of Bristol’s poetry scene. And can often be found looking bewildered and checking his emails whilst stood in the rain outside cancelled poetry gigs.

His work tackles heavyweight subjects, such as:

Can pork scratchings really be considered food?
Is my father in law actually a Nazi?

and the age old existential question

Will primula cheese bring about the next mass extinction?

Tim has the dubious honour of coming third in almost every poetry competition in the south west of England.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio)

Samuel L Cohen is a multidisciplinary Theatre Maker, award-winning Poet and Instigator of Bristol’s cabaret night RIOT ACT.

An erstwhile scholar of Ancient History led astray by his love for clowning, he is fascinated by the hidden stories (both real and imagined) that underpin
everyday life, and crafts work which celebrates the timeless absurdities that make us human.

A high-octane lyrical raconteur of the hilarious, the unbelievable and the downright outrageous, Sam joyfully discovered in poetry a means to interrogate and finally understand life’s great many true stories which defy
rational explanation. High literary and magical realist worlds collide with the everyday grit of modern urban life as he as he attempts to make sense of the senseless, armed only with a microphone and a flair for the irresistible riotous humour of his native Bristol.


Most recently, he has founded RIOT ACT- a
multidisciplinary club night of open mic fun, with the joint missions to celebrate the people of Bristol and their
stories whilst finding new ways to stick it to The Man with laughter.

Buckle up.

This is poetry to party to. The more raucously, the better.

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Satellite of Love Presents: Back to the Fuschia

Book Launch Wednesday 11th December 2024. John Sebastian Lightship

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T. S. idiot

T.S. IDIOT presents a very special evening of punk-tinged poetry in celebration of their debut collection, BACK TO THE FUCHSIA. Featuring a special selection of their very favourite Bristol poets and a unique improvised collaborative set with musician Louie Newlands (Mildred Maude, Eva May, Double Pelican).

Although known for his high energy, humour laced performances seen at comedy nights, punk gigs and poetry shows across the UK, this collection shows a more intimate side of T.S. IDIOT. Written between 2019 – 2022, these poems document a fictional 12 hour window as the poet walks through 3 years worth of grief for lost friends, broken relationships, mental breakdowns – and ultimately, the scraps of love, resilience and belonging found along the way that might just help us get through this.

Books will be available for sale at this event!

Doors are at 19:00 with entertainment starting at 19:30.
The event finishes at 22:00.

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Community poem July 2024

Love is a poet’s omelette
hidden beneath trench coats
and full brim fedoras.

We’re going to get you
Out of here, all right?
I give myself to you

Nice to meet you… Again!
Are the voices louder to drown
Out the internal monologue

Enough of this silly posturing
I wanted it to be smoothed down…

I reversed my anger into the space
I’m tired of asking why It
stinks of oil here.

A pointless pen.
They used to use black slugs
As carriage wheel lube.

There is an eyelash somewhere
that carries a wish…
Unhand me, you oaf!

Old Books, new poems and J not I,
Weaving Kayaks, Mountains, trees
and histories into a fabric of words!

July’s poem should have
been called Helen High-water…

Satellite of Love Hosts: Poetry Film club

Images and Film 19th November 7pm on the lightship

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This month’s poetry film club looks at the relationship between images and words.

In the first half we are all going to make a poetry film by adding words to ‘Seven Risings’, a film created by artist Ben Glatt and composer and musician John Pendlington. This is going to be a fun and interesting way of understanding how the words work with the images!

In the second half we will view the new film and also a trio of poetry films made in collaboration with Lucy English and various filmmakers for her Book of Hours project. All these films were inspired in someway by visual images.

As usual there will be time for discussion, and creative exchanges.

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Satellite of Love: Wendy Allen & Catherine Balaq. November 27th

This November Satellite presents a headline double bill

Doors open on the John Sebastian Lightship at 7pm, open mic starts 7.30pm

Wendy Allen

Wendy Allen’s debut pamphlet, Plastic Tubed Little Bird, was published in 2023 by Broken Sleep. She is a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her pamphlet, Portrait in Mustard will be published in October 2024 by Seren. 

Catherine Balaq

Catherine Balaq is a writer and body psychotherapist. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and nominated for the Pushcart and Forward Prize.

In 2022 Catherine was a recipient of The Poetry School MA scholarship. Her poetry play ‘Fuck the Moon’ was commissioned by Paper Nations and short-listed for the Bristol Old Vic Open Sessions 2019.

She is co-editor of Black Cat Press. Her debut collection ‘animaginary’ was published in July 2023 and was nominated for the Seamus Heaney Prize for first collection and the Pen Heaney Prize. Her second collection ‘Deathless‘ is published with Verve. Catherine also writes novels.

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