Saturday 27 July 1100 - Sunday 28 July 1700

Saturday 27^th– Sunday 28^th July, 11am-5pm

The Poetry Machine: free poems created in conversation with you!

Poet Beth Calverley will be joining us with her magical Poetry Machine.

Beth will ask you some gentle questions and weave your words into a typewritten poem to take away with you. Just follow the clatter of her vintage typewriter and look out for the machine’s bright yellow umbrella, flagpole and bubble engine…

Feel free to come on your own or bring a friend or group. Beth will be at the machine from 11am -1.30pm and 2.30- 5pm at Exeter Custom House and you can sign up for a slot on Beth’s chalkboard.

About Beth and the Poetry Machine

Beth Calverley is a poet, performer, facilitator and founder of The Poetry Machine.

Beth brings her magical Poetry Machine to places of work, care, learning and play, helping people to find words for their thoughts and feelings by creating poems together.

Beth is Poet in Residence at University Hospitals Bristol & Weston NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford University Hospitals NHS FT and the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool. She has been a Poet in Residence for The Poetry House in Ledbury (2021-22), a Bristol Poetry Festival Resident Poet (2021), a Bristol Life Awards Arts Finalist (2020), and a Roundhouse Slam Finalist (2018). She has worked with the BBC, ITV, Sky, and many more.

Her debut collection, Brave Faces & Other Smiles (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), explores some of the countless and complex reasons why we smile. Benjamin Zephaniah called it “a great collection with a honest, real theme.”

Photo credit: Oh Magazine / Amanda Thomas