Risk a Verse!

Poetry from Gray Lightfoot, Jacky Garratt and Pete Roe

Are you risk averse? Or will you Risk A Verse? Gray Lightfoot ( the bus driver poet), Jacky Garratt (the window cleaner poet) and Peter Roe ( former Deputy Bard of Dorchester) offer you poetry to entertain, provoke and delight.

Affectionately known in Penzance as “that bus-driver poet feller”, Gray still likes to use humour and modern cultural tropes to get across serious points, often ‘breaking the third wall’ in what might be considered a post-modern style. His poems are emotionally honest, self-aware, and often confessional, depicting both childhood and modern-day fears and influences. Check him out at graylightfoot.co.uk, or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6sYbY3_Djw

Jacky Garratt is a local window cleaner with a passion for poetry and songwriting. She spent her early career in various technical jobs, then medicine, and came to Cornwall as a doctor in 2000. Illness interrupted her NHS work, and during her six-year recovery, she read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and her creativity began to emerge. In 2012, she exhibited her textile interpretation of WB Yeats’ poetry, which was knitted in Morse code. In 2014, she began writing songs and performing at local open mic nights. She has performed in WonderZoo (Plymouth community arts) and When Joy Begins ( Sarah de Nordwall’s Bard School), live, online and on the radio. In 2023, she was a semi-finalist in the ISRC international songwriting competition. Last year she took part in Hypatia’s Women in Word Festival. Her work is featured in their anthology Invisible Borders.

You can find her songs and poetry on YouTube (https://youtu.be/GxOMaI3JRKg?si=ON_HFb7sswXwtiO5) and all digital music platforms (https://ditto.fm/reaching-out-jacky-garratt).

Her poetry album To Infertility and Beyond! will be released later this year.