The Cellar Bards event in Cardigan on Friday, 25 October will be a special night as part of the second Coracle Europe International Arts Festival, which is being held at a variety of venues across Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire and draws participants from west Wales, Ireland and Sweden.

Special guest readers on the evening will be Helen May Williams and Mick Evans, both with new and very different poetry collections published this year by Cinnamon Press.

Helen May Williams’ latest collection, Catstrawe, is the result of a year-long project in which she set herself a challenge to write at least one haiku a day. Each day she had to write 17 syllables before midnight. In the course of the year, many themes and preoccupations emerged from the daily acts of attention the writing required. Notably: family and family histories, connections between generations of women, stimulation from travel, inspiration from one’s immediate home locale, terrorism, the migrant crisis, and running through it all, the experience of living with cancer.

Mick Evans has poetry published in a number of anthologies. He was a runner up in the Cinnamon Single Poem Competition and a winner of the Welsh Poetry Competition. His collection, Burlesque, explores through the figure of Punch themes of identity and the roles imposed by circumstance and conditioning.

The Coracle Europe event is an international arts festival taking place over five days from October 24-28. Other venues include The Queens, Carmarthen; Cwrw, Carmarthen; and Ffwrnes Theatre, Llanelli. Events include book launches, a poetry slam, music, arts exhibitions and spoken word performances.

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 – and we like a song or two as well (max five minutes each reader). People who want to read can put their names down at the door on the night. Or go along to listen to the fabulous poetry of Mick Evans, Helen May Williams, guests from Sweden and Ireland, plus our own talented local writers.

Doors and the bar open at 7.45pm. Entry is £3.

See The Cellar Bards Facebook page for more information: https://www.facebook.com/groups/333544513348067/ or Twitter: @thecellarbards