Don Barnard, Christine Coleman , Rob Evans and Susan Utting established the Late Shift poetry ensemble in 1999 with the intention of combining their diverse styles to write and perform “themed” poetry shows as an alternative to traditional readings. These shows are lively exchanges in which the poets echo or challenge the  sentiments expressed in each others’ poems.  They have presented their one-hour shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2003/04, Ledbury Poetry Festival 2000/01, Reading International Festival 2002, Jon Silkin Memorial Festival, Camelford 2002/03, Birmingham Fringe 2002/03, St Andrews’ Stanza Poetry Festival 2005, and at various arts venues in the Midlands and the South of England.

 

“Don Barnard has a natural talent – a good ear, an instinctive sense for drama and shape.  He wields a verse technique of considerable accomplishment.”

                                                                                                            Sean O’Brien

CHRISTINE COLEMAN    

                                   

Christine Coleman has an M.A. in Writing  from N.T.U. and has taught English inSecondary schools in Dublin and  Birmingham.  She has worked in AdultEducation for several years, teachingCreative Writing and Adult Literacy.  Shehas  been winning prizes in national  poetrycompetitions since 1996, and been published inmagazines that include: Mslexia, Acumen,Frogmore Papers, The New Writer, Poetry Life and Poetry Nottingham. Her firstcollection, Single Travellers, was publishedby Flarestack in 2004, ISBN 1900397706.    Her work features in several anthologies,including Four Caves of the Heart, an     anthology of fourteen women poets (Second Light Publications, 2004, ISBN 095469340X ), Writing on Water (Ragged Raven Press 2005 ISBN 0954239784) and Scintilla 9 (ISBN 0953067483)

 

Her novel, The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society , was published by Transita in October 05.

 

As well as performing  with Late Shift at poetry festivals and arts centres around the country,  Christine also gives solo readings. Her appearances include: The Poetry Café , Frome, Somerset ; Poetry Café, Covent Garden; The Leicester Poetry Society; and The Midlands Arts Centre .

 

REVIEWS

 

“Goldilocks  is a poem that says a great deal, without saying any of it explicitly. And it holds the attention with every word.”

                                                                        Adjudication report, U.A. Fanthorpe

 

“Christine Coleman writes with a directness of style and lucidity of image that should be the envy and model of many an aspiring poet.”

                       John Alcock, Director of Open Studies      Creative Writing at the University of Warwick

 

Review of Single Travellers in Sphinx Magazine.

THE POEM  'At Athens  Airport ' muses over a description of the Aegean. It is a "flash of kingfisher, / a peacock's eye, can't catch that shade between/ taste of spearmint and smell of eucalyptus." So the turquoise-blue cover with space like a canvas for readers' imaginations is very appropriate. The same poem gives the pamphlet its tide:
Single travellers seem to cast no shadow- /landing they'll brace themselves,/ not against the jolt of wheels on tarmac,/ but the delicate reintegration of self to self.

Christine Coleman finds herself a single traveller now she's an empty-nester, her grown-up daughter reminding her now and again of her own youth. For example, in 'That Place':

She's reached that place I visited/so long ago I'd quite forgotten/ how I used to tuck my left hand /in the small, back left-hand pocket of his /Levi's as we trod the air/an inch above the pavement/and my heart, a supernova,/flaunted itself on my face with such dazzle/that passers-by would flinch and shield their eyes.

There are imaginative detours too. There's the dedication required to become a seal, tackling a migraine like a beachcomber, a snake stall at Kowloon, Goldilock's dreams of bears disturbed by her newborn, and a chilling ending to 'Storing Onions'.

This is an enjoyable journey with a confident, generous traveller, one who doesn't brashly over-signpost a tedious museum and make you wonder why you've not discovered the eighth wonder of the world. There is a minor flaw: all the poems have a very similar conversational tone, which is fine for a pamphlet, but I suspect Christine Coleman is aware of this and would give a full collection more variety.

                                                                                                            Emma Lee

Common Reader says of Single Travellers:

I loved this collection. There is something quite beautiful about the way she writes about the different types of light. I'll never forget the wonderful line from "Light Harvest' 'I'll feast all winter on this hoard of light". Of all the chapbook collections I have read so far I enjoyed this one the most.

 

ROB EVANS

Rob Evans was born and raised in Bristol and now lives in Berkshire,  although his work takes him all over the world.  He is married with two grown-up children.  Mostdays, he is a perfectly normal AerospaceEngineering Consultant but when he’s not,he writes and performs poetry to a wide rangeof audiences – the hushed and the not-so-hushed.Since coming out of the poetry closet aboutfifteen years ago, he has read his poetry in pubs   and clubs throughout the South of England,both as a solo performer and as part of the LateShift group.  He has won poetry slams inReading  and appeared at arts venues andtheatres in Cheltenham, Bracknell, Evesham, Windsor and Reading.Rob has been a poetry workshop leader at literature festivals in Camelford and Oundle and has been poet-in-residence with BBC Radio Berkshire for the Cheltenham Literature Festival.He has been published in many magazines and anthologies and won prizes in Waterstones, Ottakers and Berkshire Poetry competitions.  His first collection, Snake’s Kin, was published in 2001.

 

REVIEWS

“Each poem (in Snake’s Kin) appears to be complete in itself - characteristically tense with Rob Evans' powerful mixture of vigorous imagery, irony and accomplished technique.  Put together, they take off in an almost lyrical conversation full of unexpected moments of tenderness, and of sorrow.”

                                                                                                Jane Draycott

 

“…there is a great deal here that would make a live audience laugh.  But there is much more that is dark, troubling, and often unnervingly surreal.  He has an immaculate ear, uses a wide range of forms and metres, and is always willing to let the language lead him.  And however much fun he has with his riddling titles, his iconoclastic one-liners, his descriptive needlepoint, you always feel he has something necessary to say.”

                                                                                                John Greening

____________________________________________________________

 

SUSAN UTTING

Susan Utting runs poetry workshopscountry wide and  has taught poetry &creative writing at Reading University for many years. She was appointedCommunity Laureate for Southern Arts' Year of the Artist 2000/2001 andreceived  the 2005-6 Creative WritingFellowship from Reading University’s

School of English & American Literature.Her work has won many awards , includingthe Poetry Business Prize for the collection,Something Small is Missing,  and she hastwice been short listed for the Arvon PoetryPrize. The collection, Striptease, was publishedin 2001 by Smith/Doorstop Books. A collection of new work, Houses Without Walls , was published in  July 2006 by Two Rivers Press.

 

Susan is the founder of Reading's acclaimed Poets' Cafe, a member of Thin Raft Poetry Group, and is one quarter of the Late Shift poetry ensemble, who perform at international festivals and arts venues. Following Late Shift’s sell-out success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2003, Susan and the poet Rob Evans, took their new show to Edinburgh Festival 2004, where they  received  4-star reviews.

 

links:

http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/striptease_i0474.aspx

www.tworiverspress.com

 

REVIEWS

Poets are often praised for knowing what to leave out. Susan Utting
knows what to leave in. Ordinary things gain an almost hallucinatory
vividness in her richly textured poems. Utting animates life's brittle edges
and her poems carry unforced emotional weight.

                                                                                                            Moniza Alvi

Susan Utting’s underlying concerns, love, loss, memory and the absence of it, among others, are universal, but she reveals them to us through a world that is unfamiliar, disconcerting and just beyond momentary recognition. Her subtly crafted pieces whisk us into a carnival samba of acrobats, nocturnal topiarists, castanets, pocket knives, splinters of broken china, snatches of rhyme, song, riddle, and long-distance telephone haiku. A stunning book, its disarming, kaleidoscope vision takes the reader into the jumbled interiors of houses without walls, into the heart of what it is to be human.

                                                                                                            Anne-Marie Fyfe

These are intelligent, wittily passionate poems. Susan Utting has an eye for real and telling details, and is adept at deploying them to good poetic effect.

                                                                                                David Constantine