Cardigan venue welcomes poets and musicians

There will also be a special guest host as poet and music performer Karen Gemma Brewer steps in as MC for the evening. Open mic spots available as usual.

The event – ‘Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch and Friends’ – will feature a rich blend of poems from Samantha herself, plus Richard Douglas Pennant, Richard Marggraf Turley and John Barnie.

Their readings will be complemented with music from recently released CD Dirty Deal, by the blues trio Hollow Log. The band comprises Richard MT and John Barnie, vocals and guitars, plus Dilwyn Roberts-Young on harmonica. They’ll play songs, both original and traditional, based in the ‘Prohibition' era of the 1920s and ‘30s.

This is all happening in one packed evening at the Cellar Bar on Quay Street. Doors and the bar open at 7.45pm. Entry is £3.

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch’s poetry collections have been shortlisted for Wales Book of The Year and The Michael Marks Award. She lives in New Quay and teaches creative writing at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and at Oxford University.

Her new pamphlet, Ling di Long, takes its name from the Welsh phrase meaning ‘to walk slowly, to dilly dally’. It is about walking and what happens when we change the angle or pace at which we walk. The speakers of each of these poems tiptoe, trip, amble and limp across gardens, up mountains and along deck as their steps take them in all weathers from Shanghai to Cornwall.

Richard Marggraf Turley is an award-winning Welsh writer, author of Wan-Hu's Flying Chair and The Cunning House, as well as books on the Romantic poets.

He was born in the Forest of Dean and lives in West Wales, where he teaches Romanticism and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University. He is the University’s Professor of Engagement with the Public Imagination.

John Barnie was born and raised in Abergavenny. He has published seven collections of poetry and his work has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies and has won a Welsh Arts Council Prize for literature.

He has toured throughout the UK and abroad, reading his poems and playing guitar in a number of blues and poetry bands. Previously editor of the influential cultural magazine, ‘Planet: The Welsh Internationalist’ he is now a freelance writer, based in Aberystwyth.

Richard Douglas Pennant draws much of his inspiration from his native Wales, from its tales and legends of the Celtic deities, as well as from the Hellenic history of ancient Greece and the richness of its myths and civilization.

Human relationships, the power of love and friendship, all play a part in his writing. His book Lines in the Sky is published by Cinnamon Press and is accompanied by a CD of the poems with improvised music by Huw Warren and Neil Yates.

Open mic spots are always available at The Cellar Bards, Cardigan’s only regular spoken word event. The Bards welcome writers of poetry, short stories, micro-fiction and novels (maximum five minutes each).

“People who want to read can put their names down at the door on the night. Or go along to hear the guests perform poetry and song, plus a variety of spoken word performances from the talented regulars.