January 2005
January 9th was men's night at the Blue Room.
Our four readers were Paul Batchelor (poet), Paul Bodie (prose), Alistair Robinson (poet) and Pete Tanton (prose). Music was provided by young singer/songwriter Kevin Ward .
Paul Batchelor was born in Northumberland and is currently studying for a PhD on the poetry of Barry MacSweeney. He has been given an Eric Gregory award and the Andrew Waterhouse award for his poetry, which has been published in various magazines including Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, and Modern Poetry in Translation. He recently completed a writer's residency at the Blue Mountain Centre in New York. His poetic ambition is to translate Beowulf into Northumbrian dialect, with Kylie Minogue: a colla-la-laboration.
Paul Bodie writes energetic urban prose and we are delighted to welcome him to the Blue Room. He has lived in Newcastle for seven years and is originally from Glasgow. Paul recently packed in his job to write full time and is working on his novel Mugs.
Alistair Robinson is the winner of a 2004 Northern Promise Award for his poetry. His collection South Of Souter was published last year by Sand. He is currently working on a larger collection and a comic novel. Also a musician and a journalist, he leads the Bicycle Thieves jazz trio, playing guitar and composing much of the band's material. He is entertainments editor of the Sunderland Echo and has written a history of Sunderland Empire theatre.
Pete Tanton has lived in Britain for the past ten years, where his experiences as a freelance musician, door-to-door violin salesman and bicycle racer have blessed him with a wealth of material for stories. He currently teaches English in an inner-city school in Gateshead, where he strives to disabuse children of the notion that America is cooler than Britain or that selling anything door-to-door is a good idea.
He has recently studied on the Creative Writing MA at Northumbria University. Johnny Lonely was shortlisted for the Fresh Fiction Festival in June 2004 and is his first book.