Company of Words presents The other side of Christmas with guest poets Janine Booth and Alix Edwards – and an Open Mic. Come and enjoy some great performance poetry from Janine  Booth, stories from Alix Edwards and share some of your own Christmas gems!

From Hackney, London please give a big Cardiff welcome to performance poet, activist, biographer, speaker & trade unionist the fabulous Janine Booth – author of Mostly Hating Tories and biographer of suffragette Minnie Lansbury.

Janine will be reading prose and poetry from her new book, The Big J vs The Big C: issues, experiences and poems in the fight against breast cancer.

Janine Booth is a Marxist, trade unionist, socialist-feminist, author, poet, speaker, tutor, former RMT Executive member, supporter of Workers’ Liberty, aspie, bi, and Peterborough United fan.
She is active in the RMT trade union, having previously represented its London Transport members on the union’s National Executive, co-chairs the TUC Disabled Workers’ Committee, and also chairs the union’s Disabled Members’ Advisory Committee.

Janine is passionate about raising awareness about autism, including running training and giving presentations to trade unionists about autism in the workplace.

To find out more, visit: www.janinebooth.com

Alix Edwards is a multi-platform artist. Her work explores themes of marginalisation, domestic violence, motherhood and resilience, and gives a voice primarily to women and children whom society has failed or ignored. She uses photography, painting, installation, text and spoken word to restore life, energy and emotion to statistics, create new narratives and tell stories about women that would otherwise remain untold.

Alix won a scholarship to Oxford University to study English Literature, has an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London and graduated with an MA in photography from Central Saint Martin’s in 2016. Her work has been exhibited in England and Wales in multiple galleries and has been published, for example, in Lucent Dreaming, The Loss Project, Blink-Ink and the write time. A member of Cardiff Writer’s Circle she was runner up for the short story prize 2017 and poetry prize 2019, flash fiction winner 2017 and 2018, and short story winner 2018.

Her current projects include giant canvas Fallen, which questions the etymology of this word in relation to women and War Bride, a very personal series of found photographs and text about being a young woman growing up in Fascist Italy created for 36 Exposures.

To find out more, visit: www.alixedwardsartography.com
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