Tag: John Sebastian Lightship

Satellite of Love Presents: Holly Moberley’s ‘Kinder Parasites’ Book Launch

On board the John Sebastian Lightship 4th November
Doors 7pm event starts 7.30pm
Finishes 10pm

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Join Holly Moberley and friends in the launch of her debut pamphlet ‘Kinder Parasites’ with stripped back support sets from local musician JuJu and poet Raina Greifer at the Lightship.

Holly Moberley (she/they) is a queer poet and poison berry from the South East. She is a Poetry Society Young Critic and has been published in fourteen poems, Bi+Lines, Butcher’s Dog & The North. She is Bristol’s 2021 LYRA Slam Champion and identifies her work as feminist diary entries from your weird cousin. Avoidantly confronting, delightfully despicable, Holly’s poetry welcomes readers into the dark dark forest of tumblr pages for hands and lesbians in the US cabinet. ‘Kinder Parasites’, published by Broken Sleep Books, is her debut pamphlet.

‘Kinder Parasites’ Summary:

‘Kinder Parasites’ is a feminist séance with pop-culture’s most infamous. Influenced by queer theatrics and by personified feather boa — Hera Lindsay Bird, this pamphlet aims to strike a match and wake the dead; exploring the mariana trench of lesbian love and loneliness. In ‘Kinder Parasites’, Megan Fox has a heartbeat Shostakovich can’t bear and the gravedigger digs a hole during the speed dating event. What begins as a fun exploration of blood suckers, the natural world and pop-culture descends into a clamber through human rituals and the complicated queer experience; “meow this cosmic joke!!! this spider’s leg I eventually made crawl!!!”

JuJu
Hailing from Bristol & London, JuJu (she/her) draws influence from the likes of PJ Harvey, Florence Welch and Kate Bush. Juju is a gothic force who merges heavy synths and thunderous guitars. Conjuring up moody and queer alt pop-rock anthems, JuJu’s dark lyricism and powerful stage presence both charms and mystifies. She will be bewitching listeners with an acoustic set on launch night.

Raina Greifer (she/they) is a performance maker, producer, and frequent party planner. They were shortlisted for the SH24: Sexual Health Awards 2022 as Young Person of the Year and were a BBC Words First Finalist in 2021. Her solo show MANIC won Best Solo Show at Fuse International in 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2023 Saboteur Awards. Often found reading erotica or putting on cabarets, Raina’s work is some of the boldest and sexiest there is.

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

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Satellite of Love presents: Jo Eades ‘Flanked’ Book Launch

John Sebastian Lightship 8th October 2025
Doors open 7.00pm event starts 7.30pm
Ends 10pm

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Jo Eades performs regularly on the Bristol spoken word scene. In 2023, she performed on the Milk Poetry stage at Valleyfest and was selected as one of eight emerging poets from the South West to be part of Apple and Snakes’ Future Voices project. In 2024 she was the Lyra Bristol Poetry Slam Champion and won the Hip Yak Poetry Shack Slam at WOMAD Festival. In 2025 she featured at Keynsham Music Festival, won the Ledbury Poetry Festival Slam and came fourth in the England SLAM! Championships.

Flanked:
From the horrors of toddler classes to the complexities of grief, Flanked is a smorgasbord of maternal experience and emotion. A scrutiny of motherhood across generations and an exploration of loss as both heart-wrenching and liberating.

Tinged with doubt, regret, guilt, acceptance, joy and love, Flanked captures the intricate dynamics of mother / daughter relationships — where roles morph and history repeats.
A reflection on letting go and looking forward.

Flanked will be published by Burning Eye Books in October 2025

JEMMA HATHAWAY
Jemma Hathaway likes to put words next to one another and see if they hit it off. She writes about big four-letter things: time, hope, love, loss – and the innumerable ways they touch our lives. She hopes to reach yours today.

ADAM ELMS
Adam Elms is a visually impaired creative whose work has been published in over twenty books, journals, and magazines. Adam won the Waltham Forest Poetry Award in 2023 with his poem, ‘The Last VHS Player in England’, and has been nominated for the 2025 Forward Prize.

ERYN MCDONALD
Eryn is an interdisciplinary artist working across poetry, dance, theatre and film. They were part of the 2024 Apples & Snakes South West Cohort along with Jo, during which they created a poetry film about queerness and leaving home in search of community.

BEN VINCE
Ben Vince is a Bristol based poet and performer, the winner of the 2025 Lyra Festival Slam, and a finalist for the Mind Over Matter national slam. He has been published in Horizon, The Mays and Dawntreader (forthcoming) and is currently completing a PhD in queer ecological literature at the University of Bristol.

ALEXIS BROOKS
Her poetic narratives explore the crevices and characters that we often bypass, shun or cross the road to avoid. Alexis peels back their layers until all that is left are the glimpses and reflections of ourselves. Alexis is a SLAM-winning poet who has been described as “one of the most exciting fresh forces in poetry in the South West.

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

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Satellite of Love Hosts: Poetry Film Club

Tuesday 16th September 2025
on board the John Sebastian Lightship

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September’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 latest publication, and screening Flight the poetry film from the prologue to the book. Horse-Woman (Basic Bruegel Editions, Canada, April, 2025) is a mythical ‘otherkin’ poetic memoir with paintings from the past. It relates to a traumatic period in her early life when she was working as a fashion model whilst painting and writing in a bohemian London bedsit, and in this account, resurrects a childhood horse companion for protection.

Rebecca Rezakhani-Hilton will be reading short poems. Rebecca is a poet, filmmaker, DJ and multidisciplinary artist whose work an ongoing exploration of dreams, empathy, angels, temporality, return, hope, impossibility and an exploration into her Iranian heritage. At the heart of her practice lies a deep interest in the relationship between the body and the contexts we inhabit socially, historically and spiritually. Her work has been exhibited both in the UK and internationally, including in Bath, Newcastle, London, Belgium and Berlin. Rebecca will present a poetry film and read short poems.

Chaucer Cameron is the author of In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered. The poetry film adaptation of the book has screened at the CCA in Covent Garden, Reel Poetry Festival in Houston, Aberystwyth Poetry Festival, Worcester, Exeter, Bristol, Glastonbury and Yorkshire. Chaucer will share four variations of one poetry film ‘Hooked’, from a poem in In an Ideal World.

As usual, there will be plenty of time for discussion.

Entry requirements: 14+, any under 18s accompanied by 21+ adult 1:1 ratio

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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.

Home » John Sebastian Lightship

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…