Videos
On Zoom
Date of Live Meeting: Wed 16th Mar 2022
Featured Reader & Open Mic: Chris Hardy
Words Out Loud present Featured Reader Chris Hardy and Open-Mic to follow. Join us to hear original writing, out loud.
Chris Hardy’s poetry has appeared widely in magazines and online and his new collection ‘Key to the Highway’ has just been published by Shoestring Press. Chris is in LiTTLe MACHiNe, performing their settings of famous poems.
‘The greatest poetry & music band in the world’
(Carol Ann Duffy)
On Zoom
Date of Live Meeting: Wed 16th Feb 2022
Featured Reader & Open Mic: Jane Metcalfe
Jane began her working life in a variety of jobs, as a night-club hostess, antiquarian bookseller and record shop assistant, before discovering she could sing. After studying at the Royal College of Music, Jane pursued a successful career as an Opera singer and recitalist, notably as a soloist with the D’Oyly Carte Opera as well as major opera houses in the UK. She taught singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for a number of years working with students of drama, music therapy and performance and communication skills.
After gaining an MA in Creative Writing from Sussex University, Jane went on to facilitate numerous creative reminiscence projects in East Sussex as both writer and community workshop leader. She has written plays and monologues that have been performed and led writing workshops. Jane was commissioned to write a poem for Where the Wild Flowers Are, a project hosted by The City of London Festival, 2012. Her poetry has appeared in various publications and she has had modest successes in poetry competitions. A trio of poems celebrating life after cancer have been set to music by British composer Jonathan Dove. She is the author of Things in Heaven and Earth, a true story of love, mystery and transformation: an intriguing account of an intense and secret affair between a British dramatist and a legendary Hollywood actress.
Jane has one son and currently lives opposite the sea in St Leonards on Sea, where she teaches singing, runs The ParkinSongsters, a choir she founded for people with Parkinson’s, and writes.
On Zoom
Date of Live Meeting: Wed 19th Jan, 2022
Featured Reader & Open Mic: Stephanie Norgate
Stephanie Norgate is a poet and playwright. Her plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. For many years, she ran the MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University and is now a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She edited an international collection of essays, Poetry and Voice (CSP, 2012) and Winchester Poetry Festival’s Chalk Poets Anthology (Sarsen Press, 2015). In 2016, she completed a study of poetry trails for South Downs National Park. As a translator, she has contributed to Modern Poetry in Translation and the MPT anthology, Centres of Cataclysm (Bloodaxe Books/MPT, 2016). Her chapter about the imagery of the house in her poetry appears in Architectural Space and the Imagination (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Her three collections of poetry with Bloodaxe are Hidden River (2008), which was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, The Blue Den (2012) and The Conversation (2021).
FESTIVE OPEN MIC
Date of Live Meeting: 15th Dec, 2021
Our Festive Open-Mic. We didn’t have a featured reader for this event, so some of us brought along some extras to read to light up the dark night!
Featured Reader & Open Mic: Christine Rowlands
Date of Live Meeting: 17th Nov, 2021
Christine trained as an embroidery teacher and worked in an FE College as a special needs teacher working with adult learners. She has also worked in libraries, for The Lady newspaper and The Daily Telegraph. She currently leads Art workshops for older people at Christ Church Chichester while continuing to enjoy reading and writing poetry.
Featured Reader & Open Mic: Piers Rowlandson
Date of Live Meeting: 2oth Oct, 2021
Piers Rowlandson
Piers is a regular at our Open Mic events on Zoom and in person at Wagtail. He has been writing poetry for pleasure for many years and has also recently published several collections of his work.
Recorded Live – Featured Reader Jen Kelley
Zoom Open Mic – Sept 2021
Jen Kelley
Chichester Zooms
Wednesday 15th September, 2021 at 6:30pm
Jennifer is a poet, fiction, and non-fiction writer living in Ventura, CA. She graduated from California State University, Channel Islands in 2017, with a degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing.
Most recently she is being published in the 2020/2021 edition of Spillway. She was included in the anthology Psalms of Cinder and Silt, published as Solo Novo: volume 7/8. Two of her poems were published in the chapbook Love Letters to the Recently Departed in 2018. She has been published twice in the ASKEW literary journal, in 2015 and 2017. Her ekphrastic works were included in Kevin Sloan’s Exhibition, A Collection of Rarities at the California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks. Most recently, she has begun writing blogs for Off Main: the Ventura County Poetry Project.
She has appeared as the featured poet in the Loose Lips, series in Malibu and throughout Ventura County, including Jackson Wheeler’s Arcade Poetry Series in 2015 and 2016. A regular performer at John M. White’s performance series 5X5X5 in the last three years, Jennifer loves the energy of a live audience.
For her growth as a poet and her opportunities, to present her work, she entirely blames her poetry family at Phil Taggart’s Thursday Night Poetry, at EP Foster library.
Her chapbook, These Things Remain was published in 2005 and she is currently looking for a publisher for her full-length collection, Coming in from the Wild.
She is recently completed a fantasy trilogy, The Founders, and begun work on the futuristic corporate thriller The Vampire Hunters.
Phil Taggart
Chichester Zooms
Wednesday 18th August, 2021 at 6:30pm
Phil Taggart has three collections of poetry. Rick Sings, Opium Wars and an art book with artist Ann Harithas, Cowboy Collages. He has been a poetry editor for over twenty years for Art Life limited edition, and with Marsha de la O, the Askew Poetry Journal and Spillway.
Phil has taught poetry workshops at Cal Lutheran, University of Pittsburg, local high schools, CAPS Media and elementary schools. He teaches Broadcast Digital Media at El Camino High School at Ventura College
Phil has run and supported poetry readings in Ventura County and Santa Barbara since 1991. He presently hosts a weekly poetry reading at the EP Foster Library in Ventura.
Sue Shattock
Chichester Zooms
Wednesday 21st July, 2021 at 6:30pm
Sue describes herself as an “accidental” writer and new poet. She wrote a script for fun one sunny bank holiday weekend in 1990. As a stage-manager on the long running police TV drama “The Bill”, she gave the script to a colleague who passed it to one of the shows editors and Sue was “discovered” as a writer – as much to her surprise as everyone else’s!
After stepping away from professional writing, Sue became a complementary colour therapistteacher and is a marriage registrar in Chichester. Her love of dialogue, the rhyme and rhythm of words was re-ignited quite recently and she enjoys creating monologues, plays and poetry for performance and entertainment.
Nigel Millet
Chichester Zooms
Wednesday 16th June, 2021 at 6:30pm
Nigel now enjoys life in abundance, having moved to Chichester five years ago and living with his partner Sarah.
During his professional life he had several career changes all in pursuit of life’s adventures & betterment, working overseas and in the UK.
He has always been very fond of the arts and over the years written several poems for fun and for love, only recently deciding to compile a small collection of his words and thoughts in the form of a book , now working on a follow up.
Mike Jenkins
Chichester Zooms
Wednesday 19th May, 2021 at 6:30pm
Mike has been writing poems since the angst ridden age of 16 when they were then mostly all about figuring out why falling in love with people hurt so much.
Since then he has worked as an actor, a customer service coach, a teacher and a web designer. Mike also leads groups in meditation practice. He is currenlty editing a collection of his poems for publication.
Tina McNaughton
Chichester Zooms
Wednesday 21st April, 2021 at 6:30pm
Tina divides her time between Crowthorne, Berkshire and her home city, Portsmouth. Tina is married and has three sons. She started life as a linguist, has a literature background and has worked as a teacher. Tina now works as an acupuncturist and has her own clinic in Crowthorne.
She also has a professional writing services company, WriteRhymes, which produces bespoke celebration poetry on commission. Tina is passionate about poetry and finds reading and writing it therapeutic, uplifting and calming. When she wants to relax she walks, cycles, dances and practices yoga. And reads more poetry.