Please come along to our annual competition event where judge Kim Moore, 1st prize winner Isabelle Thompson and 2nd prize winner Kathryn Bevis will read their winning poems (and others). Third prize winner Rosie Rockel is unfortunately unable to attend. Kim will also do a reading of her own work. Music from Chuva. The venue is the Whitworth Art Gallery, time 2.30-4.00. You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the Gallery on the Whitworth’s website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome. 

Isabelle Thompson

Isabelle Thompson is a graduate with Distinction of Bath Spa University’s MA in Creative Writing, where she now works part time as a research assistant. She has been published or has work forthcoming in The Interpreter’s House, Rattle, 14 Magazine and The New Welsh Review, among others. She was a finalist in the 2021 Mslexia poetry competition. Her reviews appear regularly in Sphinx

Kathryn Bevis

Kathryn Bevis is a neurodivergent poet and poetry teacher. She was Hampshire Poet Laureate in 2020-21 and is the Selected Poet for Magma’s Solitude issue Her poems have appeared in Poetry Wales, Poetry Ireland Review, The London Magazine, Mslexia, and The Interpreter’s House. In 2019, she won the Poets & Players and the Against the Grain competitions. This past year, her poems have come second in the York Poetry Prize and the Edward Thomas Prize, have been commended in the Verve Poetry Competition and longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her pamphlet manuscript was highly commended in the 2021 Mslexia Pamphlet Competition.  She designs and delivers Poetry for Wellbeing courses for adults in mental health settings, substance-misuse recovery settings, and prisons and is working towards her first collection.

Kim Moore

Kim Moore’s pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition. Her first collection The Art of Falling (Seren 2015) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married was published by Seren in 2021. Her first non-fiction book What The Trumpet Taught Me will be published by Smith/Doorstop in March 2022.

Chuva

Chuva are a Manchester based mandolin/guitar duo that was founded in 2018 by guitarists Rafael Onyett and mandolinist/guitarists Borna Kuca, whilst studying at the Royal Northern College of Music. Under the tutelage of renowned guitarist Craig Ogden, the duo quickly developed a strong musical chemistry and have since performed frequently across the UK.

Such venues include Wakefield Cathedral, Whitworth Art Gallery, Southport Christ Church, Bury Parish Church, Instituto Cervantes and Bridgewater Hall as part of Craig Ogden’s ‘Big Guitar Weekend.’ Most recently the duo performed a live concert streamed online from Preston Museum as well as reaching the semi-finals of the Royal Overseas League annual music competition which will be held in London in October of 2021.

Although a Manchester-based duo, Borna originally hails from Croatia and Rafael is of Latin American heritage. The result is an interesting amalgamation of varied musical experiences and cultures, and an overall desire to explore music from different parts of the world. This is reflected in a diverse mixture of classical and folk repertoire and even the exploration of different folk instruments, such as the mandolin. In 2019, Duo Chuva developed an exciting live music and dance collaborative project, with a re-imagined performance of Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Suite. The project was debuted at the Instituto Cervantes, Manchester.