Poetry recalls summer floods

8:00am Friday 9th May 2008

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AS part of its continuing season of fundraising events, ACT (Arts and Community in Thornbury) joins the Thornbury Arts Festival Fringe to present an evening of poetry - on Saturday, May 24 (8pm).

Two entertaining Gloucestershire poets, Brenda Read-Brown and Peter Wyton, will be performing at the Porch House (Christ the King Hall), Castle Street, Thornbury.

The evening, entitled Floods and Forward, recalls in poetry the disastrous floods which affected so much of Gloucestershire in July 2007.

Brenda Read-Brown, a published poet and creative writing teacher, who has a wealth of experience in taking poetry to the community in libraries, prisons and hospitals, visited emergency services, local heroes and ordinary people caught up in the crisis to hear their accounts of that extraordinary time. Some of the stories of outstanding courage and community camaraderie were celebrated in ten poems which were broadcast on Radio Gloucester and read at Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Performing alongside Brenda will be Peter Wyton who is a widely published and prize winning poet. He was a finalist in BBC Radio 4's Radio Slam and is also known as the 'Bin Bag Bard' from his practice of asking audiences to put items in a bin bag which he takes out to inspire impromptu poems.. Both poets are also members of the Football Poets. After the interval, in which pasties and pints make an appearance, Brenda and Peter invite the audience to enjoy the lively experience of the fun and frivolity of performance poetry.

Tickets are on sale at The Garden Shop in Thornbury.