Prize-winning poets share works over a pint

Saturday, November 10 (7.30pm), sees two prize-winning poets from Lancashire, who combine writing with the visual arts, in the spotlight at the village hall, Greenodd, near Ulverston.

Sharing top of the bill will be Mike Barlow and Jane Routh.

Mike was the winner of the National Poetry Competition 2006 with his poem The Third Wife. He has previously won First Prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2005, and landed the top slot in the 2002 Amnesty International Competition.

His first collection, Living On The Difference, was overall winner of the Poetry Business Competition 2004 and he was subsequently short-listed for the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection in 2005. Salt Publishing has just published his second collection, Another Place.

Mike lives near Lancaster where, after a career as a probation officer, he works and exhibits as a visual artist as well as writing.

Jane Routh is a poet and photographer who manages a woodland area and a flock of geese in the Forest of Bowland, north Lancashire, where she's lived for the last 30 years.

Her first collection, Circumnavigation, won the Poetry Business Competition and was short-listed for a Forward Prize. Teach Yourself Mapmaking followed in 2006 and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

A pamphlet of her short poems about avian influenza, Waiting for H5N1, has just been published by Templar Poetry.

Jane read recently at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, St Anza Poetry Festival, and Words by the Water in Keswick, as well as Lancaster Litfest, Manchester Literature Festival, Sedbergh Book Festival and Wordplay in Shetland.

She also read some of her sea poetry for the Sea Britain celebrations in Greenwich.

Gifted young singer Maz O'Connor will provide the music, there will be floor slots available for six local poets to read and Mark Carson is the MC.

Admission will be £4/ concessions £3.

For full details of Poem and a Pint events log on to www.apoemandapint.co.uk