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December Oxfam Poetry Fundraiser Tonight!

DECEMBER 2, 2008, OXFAM Reading
7-9 pm
8 poets in 80 Minutes
91 Marylebone High Street
London W1

1ST HALF

Niall McDevitt performed in various Ken Campbell productions including the 24-hour play THE WARP, a sex education play for children WE DON'T TALK ABOUT IT, and a Melanesian version of Shakespeare PIDGIN MACBETH. His poems have been published in Poetry Ireland, The Wolf, The London Magazine, and broadcast on Radio 3, Radio 4, RTE1 and Resonance FM. His poem 'Off-Duty' was winner of BBC Radio 3's THE VERB Urban Poetry Competition in 2005. He leads Blake/Rimbaud/Yeats and other poetry walks in London.

David Prater's publications include The Happy Farang (2000), We Will Disappear (2007) and Morgenland (2007). He is the editor of online poetry journal Cordite (http://www.cordite.org.au/) and also maintains an Internet home page (http://www.daveydreamnation.com/). He has performed at various Australian and international poetry festivals and currently lives in The Hague.

Julian Stannard teaches at the University of Winchester. He is the author of Rina's War and The Red Zone (Peterloo Poets), and his writing has appeared variously in the Guardian, TLS, Sunday Telegraph, Poetry Review and The PN Review. He was recently a Bogliasco Fellow in Poetry at the Ligurian Study Centre, Italy.

Peter Robinson published a new collection, The Look of Goodbye: Poems 2001-2008 (Shearsman), at the beginning of this year. His translation, The Greener Meadow: Selected Poems of Luciano Erba (Princeton), was awarded the John Florio Prize in September. In the next twelve months or so he will publish Poetry & Translation: The Art of the Impossible (Liverpool) and Spirits of the Stair: Selected Aphorisms (Shearsman). He is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Reading.

Interval

2ND HALF

Joe Dunthorne's debut novel, Submarine, is published by Hamish Hamilton. It was shortlisted for the Bollinger Wodehouse prize for comic fiction. He was the winner of the Curtis Brown prize in 2006. His poetry's been read on Radio 3 and 4, Channel 4 and published in Poetry Review, Magma and the New Welsh Review.

Nancy Mattson lives in London, where she moved in 1990 from the Canadian prairies. Her first poetry collection, Maria Breaks Her Silence (Regina: Coteau 1989), published in Saskatchewan, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry in Canada. Her second collection is Writing with Mercury (Hexham: Flambard 2006). She is one of five poets in Take Five 06 (Nottingham: Shoestring 2006). In 2007 she was a Poetry Fellow at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. She co-organizes Poetry in the Crypt in Islington.

Philip Hancock. Born Newchapel, Stoke-on-Trent. Poems in magazines including: Magma; Nthposition; The North; Orbis; Other Poetry; Oxford Magazine; Poetry London; The Poetry Paper (Aldeburgh Poetry Festival 2007); The Rialto; The Spectator; Smoke; Smiths Knoll and Tears in the Fence. Philip was selected for the Jerwood Aldeburgh Seminar and read at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival 2007. A debut pamphlet is due later this year.

A.F. Harrold has published two collections of poetry (Logic & the Heart (2004) and Of Birds & Bees (2008)) and two collections of comic entertainments (Postcards From The Hedgehog (2007) and The Man Who Spent Years In The Bath (2008)). He often works as a performance poet and a cabaret artiste, as well as a man prepared to do just about anything with words for almost any amount of money. Among other things this year he was Poet-in-Residence for the Glastonbury Festival's website, which involved very little mud, thank goodness.

Niall McDevitt (Christmas ending - 3 Geoffrey Hill poems set to music)

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