How to Make a Living as a Poet

Get advice on how to have a career as a poet

Organised by The Society of Authors the evening will feature advice from award-winning poets Penelope Shuttle and Pascale Petit.

Aimed at aspiring writers who are seeking to make a living from poetry and related activities, the event will be chaired by Katrina Naomi of the Poetry & Spoken Word Group.

Pascale Petit grew up in France and Wales and now lives in Cornwall. Her 2017 collection of poetry, ‘Mama Amazonica’, won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, was shortlisted for the Roehampton Prize, and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. ‘Tiger Girl’, which will be published in 2020, won a Royal Society of Literature ‘Literature Matters’ Award while in progress. She has also received a Cholmondeley Award and was appointed a Royal Society of Literature Fellow in 2018.

Penelope Shuttle is a poet and novelist who has made her home in Cornwall since 1970, with the county’s mercurial weather and rich history providing continuing sources of inspiration. Shuttle is president of Falmouth Poetry Group (FPG) and a trustee for the Charles Causley Trust. Her latest publication is ‘Four Poems from Lyonesse’. Other recent publications include a collaboration with Alyson Hallet, ‘Lzrd: poems from the Lizard Peninsula’ and ‘Will You Walk A Little Faster?’, which was Poetry Book of the Month in The Observer, July 2017.

Katrina Naomi‘s third full collection of poetry will be published in June 2020. She recently received an Arts Council/British Council Artists’ International Development award to travel to Japan and ‘Typhoon Etiquette’ – a pamphlet of her poetry inspired by this trip – was published in April 2019 by VERVE poetry press. Katrina has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths and teaches for Arvon, the Poetry School and Ty Newydd. She lives in Penzance, and runs poetry surgeries for the Poetry Society.

Free admission, all welcome. CAST Café food from 6pm, something hot and something sweet from £7.50. The presentations will begin at 7pm.