Wednesday 25th March at the Loco Klub. Doors 19:00 event starts at 19:30. Event finishes at 22:30.
Rosie Garland has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries, & Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. An award-winning poet, novelist and short story writer, she is frontwoman for post-punk band The March Violets. Poetry collection What Girls do the Dark (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize & latest collection This Is How I Fight was Observer Poetry Book of the Month. Her poetry and fiction – described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter” – looks beneath the skin to the multitudes inside: galaxies, creatures, wicked queens & fire – all itching & roaring to be seen.
Photo by Rachel Saunders
Rowena Knight’s poetry is influenced by her queerness, feminism, and upbringing in New Zealand. Her poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Magma, The Rialto, and The Emma Press Anthology of Love, among others. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize and commended in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prize, and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and spoken word events across Bristol and London. Her pamphlet All the Footprints I Left Were Red is published by Valley Press. You can find her on Instagram @purple_fantail.
Photo of Rowena reading by Sam Cavender.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio)
At the Loco Klub 26th November Doors at 7pm Event starts 7.30pm Event finishes at 10.30
Georgie Jones is a poet and performer known for her humour and heart. Praised for her ‘formidable stage presence and compelling way with words’ (reviewshub) Georgie’s poetry feels like a really good chat with a really old friend (lifelong as opposed to ancient).
She explores the exquisite messiness of modern existence through poetry, stories and just a smidge of oversharing, with abundant wit and warmth in tow. Georgie can’t promise any answers, but she’ll do her best to make you feel better about not having them.
Caitlin O’Ryan’s debut collection is a journey of mirror smashing and everything we have come to accept being called into question. With deep vulnerability and wit, she invites us to look inside of ourselves and to interrogate what we find there. Fuelled by the times that we are living in, her poems vibrate through the pages, grabbing you with a sense of urgency that says “you are not alone, I also feel this”.
Taken from her live performances and featuring her viral poem ‘AT WHAT POINT’ which has amassed millions of views online and culminated in her being invited onto BBC Woman’s Hour, this book will light a fire in you that will continue to burn long after you have put it down. Caitlin is also known for her recurring role in the hit TV series Outlander.
‘Caitlin’s words are as powerful on the page as they are on the stage.‘ Harry Baker
‘A devastatingly heartfelt, intelligent, witty and turbulent ode to female friendship, fears, hopes and dreams … the book I wish I’d had in my twenties but so glad to have now in my forties, where I still swim in the uncertainties of this beautiful and confounding life.‘ Catriona Balfe
Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio)
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)
Join us for an evening of words, water, and wonder as we launch Sophie Dumont’s debut poetry collection Sculling. This is not just a book launch – it’s a celebration of the Bristol’s River Avon. Lyrical, tender and fierce, Sculling traces grief, desire, and transformation through the movement of rivers, asking how we live, love, and let go. Sophie will be supported by poetry from Bristol’s Caleb Parkin and Meg Avon. Let’s create an Avon-loving evening rippling with community, mourning and merrymaking!
Dress code: Your rivery finest. Think river silks, moonlight sequins, driftwood crowns – anything that makes you feel like part of the tide.
About Sculling:
In her unflinching and tenderly obsessive collection, Sculling, poet Sophie Dumont explores a deeply personal relationship to the River Avon, as she circles the curses that unravel from a canoe club.
At the age of sixteen, Sophie Dumont trained to be a canoe coach before her own coach and partner of three years died suddenly in an aquaplaning road accident, which led to five of his organs continuing at least seven people’s lives. His heart was donated to a young man studying in the same city as he did.
Using the kayak as a vessel to traverse life’s accumulation of losses, Sculling speaks of how this bereavement caused Dumont to reflect on her relationship to bodies of water, from her own body to the state of pollution in UK rivers. Here, she explores the campaign for rivers to be given personhood status for rights to protection and inspects the symbiosis of her body and the river’s.
Sculling is a powerful investigation into categories of haunting, from a body living on through donated organs, through dementia’s slow erasure, and through witnessing her niece learn object permanence – that things continue to exist when they are not visible.
In her fiercely vulnerable and meticulous debut, Dumont probes the urge to call out when under a bridge, to hear oneself ricocheted back, changed:
‘. . . a boy in a red cap opens his throat, throws sound into shadows, as we’ve all done, in the reckless hope of its return.’
Image credit: Jae Frederick
About Sophie:
Sophie Dumont is a poet and copywriter based in Bristol and Bath. Her poetry won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize and has appeared in The Rialto, Magma, The Moth, Ink Sweat and Tears and Mslexia among others. Dumont has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has held writing residencies along Bristol Harbourside with Boat Poets and Exeter Quay through Literature Works.
About Meg:
Meg Avon of The River Bride is a Bristol-based celebrant, poet, activist, performance artist and environmental romantic. From Meg: “In June 2023, I married my local river the Bristol Urban Avon. I married them not just because I love the river deeply, but because I wanted to raise awareness about river pollution with a story that is engaging. Two years on and the relationship is still going strong. I have left my job as a community worker to pursue a career as a writer and campaigner, touring my first collection of poetry My Avon earlier this year.”
About Caleb:
Caleb Parkin was Bristol City Poet 2020 – 22. He’s published three pamphlets and his debut collection, This Fruiting Body was longlisted for the Laurel Prize; his second, Mingle, was published Oct 2024. He’s a PhD researcher with RENEW Biodiversity at the University of Exeter, and an experienced tutor and workshop leader.
Jasmine Gardosi is the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and an Honorary Doctor of Letters. They are a multiple slam champion, beatboxer, winner of the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry and winner of the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Performer 2023. Their work exploring identity, LGBTQ issues and mental health has appeared on Button Poetry, at the Tate Modern, Glastonbury Festival, Symphony Hall and BBC. They were featured on Sky Arts’ BAFTA-winning show Life & Rhymes and their poem about the pandemic, filmed on a rollercoaster, was broadcast across America on PBS. They have taken their poetry across Europe, including at Romania’s Transylvania International Spoken Word Festival, and Estonia’s historical, first-ever queer poetry slam for Baltic Pride. Most recently, their work has taken them across the globe with performances and workshops in the Philippines and America.
They are a previous Writer in Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Poet in Residence at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and BBC Arts Young Creative. Jasmine penned a new rock anthem for Birmingham, “Brummie Steel” which was performed by a mass collective of 300 musicians, commissioned by Misfits Music Foundation. Their poetry/beatbox/Celtic dubstep show ‘Dancing To Music You Hate’ explores gender identity and was commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre. After premiering to standing ovations, it won Best Spoken Word Show in the Saboteur Awards and its titular track was performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, broadcast on BBC Four. Following a sold-out show at Symphony Hall, the show toured the UK in the summer of 2023, and in 2025, toured to the Philippines with support from The British Council.
@jasminegardosi jasminegardosi.com
Photography by: Thom Bartley, Lee Allen, and Olwen Hills
Angela Innes
Angela Innes (she/they) is a Bristol based Queer poet. Growing up in Essex, she found comfort in performance poetry published online and uploaded her first poem to YouTube over a decade ago. Their work explores intimacy, queer identity, and the world through the eyes of someone who grew up too quickly.
Angela has lent her voice to national charity campaigns and fundraising events for movements including End Period Poverty, Breast Cancer Now, and Welsh Women’s Aid. They have performed political poetry for TEDx and while completing a Master’s in Sexuality and Gender studies become a two-time UniSlam finalist.
Her debut collection, good girl, published in 2021, has been described as “flying the flag of survival with compassion and courage.” Her parents in law are in the audience and they’re both writers, so please cheer extra loud.
Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio)
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.
Bridget Hart (they/them) is a working class writer based in Bristol. Known for their cutting wit and quietly heart-breaking poems, Bridget has been performing for over a decade across the UK at festivals and events including Shambala, Boomtown, Hit the Ode, Say Owt and Edinburgh Fringe.
They have published two collections of poetry: Chewing Gum (Small Press, 2021) and Better Watch Your Mouth (Burning Eye, 2017). Bridget has poems and short stories published by Comma Press, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Late Britain, Bluebird Anthology and more.
Elena Chamberlain is a poet from the Midlands. She has shared writing on local and national stages and in pages. In 2023, El was longlisted for the Outspoken Prize for Poetry (2023), they are an alumni of Apples and Snakes’ Word’s A Stage 2.0 (2024), and a participant of Apples and Snakes’ Future Voices (2023), representing the South West.
Until she retreats into the woods, Elena can be found on Instagram @arspoeticel
Entry requirements: 14+, any under 18s accompanied by 21+ adult 1:1 ratio
Harry and Kate went to masturbate, loving the vibration of love, a slow, slinky ooziness. A sausage, a hole and Vinted. Breathe in, said Kate, exhale the fire of living. The bag was bulging.
We need to establish a safeword, said Harry I’m thinking of a line, said Kate, but it’s not happening, the only thing that comes to mind is a thousand fucking doves. Harry suggested: I love Ian Beale…? Chocolate coins? said Kate Time is a construct! Dare you! Dare you! Double dare you?
The naughty little mouse nibbled my member, said Harry Well, your compliment wasn’t good enough, said Kate, asking to see my anus on Instagram is not a love poem. An ode for a misplaced hip flask? said Harry.
I hate loving you, you love hating me, said Harry, and the postage was paid in Northern Ireland.
Days are unequal in the struggles of the dead, said Kate What is stopping ants from taking over the world? Democracy?
I hope this line is read out of context like Leda, like Persephone, like women, women, women. On this pirate ship poetry pandemonium, we’re all just twatting around in the glitter.
Wednesday March 26th 2025 Loco Klub doors open at 7pm open mic starts 7.30pm Evening finish at 10pm
Jo Bell
Jo Bell is a well-loved poet who has appeared everywhere from Glastonbury to Buckingham Palace, by way of running the UK’s National Poetry Day and winning major poetry prizes. She runs award-winning poetry communities, she writes best-selling books including 52 and How to Be a Poet. Catch her on a rare Bristol visit, before she hits the road with her memoir Boater, out in June with HarperNorth.
Carlo Sebastian Hornilla
Carlo Sebastian Hornilla (They/Them) is a Bristol-based Filipino queer artist, illustrator, workshop facilitator, creative consultant, spoken word poet, organised chaos, lover or lists, ticker of boxes and awkward human being.
They use fun, play and conversation as a platform to explore introspective feelings, interpersonal connection and the complexities that exist within them.
They will say a bunch of words and you might listen to them. Maybe you will laugh, you might cry (only if you want to). Maybe it doesn’t matter… Either way, they hope you have a perfectly average and tolerable time.
Entry requirements: Anyone under the age of 14 must be accompanied by an adult 21+ years old.
Martin Figura’s collection and show Whistle were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were both published in 2016. In 2021 he was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence; the resulting pamphlet My Name is Mercy (Fair Acre Press) won a national NHS award. A second pamphlet from Fair Acre Press Sixteen Sonnets for Care came out in October 2022. His collection The Remaining Men ( Cinnamon Press) was published in 2024. He Lives in Norwich with Helen Ivory and sciatica.
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. She received a Society of Authors Cholmondeley Award in 2024. She edits Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches for the National Centre for Writing Academy. Her chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City was published by SurVision in 2019 and the poem The Square of the Clockmaker is riding the rails as one of the Poems on the Underground. She has work translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Croatian, Spanish. Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems appeared from MadHat in the US last year. Constructing a Witch (October 2024) her sixth Bloodaxe collection is a PBS Winter Recommendation.
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