The Spoke Poetry Event ticket

Join us for an evening of poetry readings from Abeer Ameer, Rachael Clyne, Elizabeth Parker, Robert Walton and Claire Williamson.

When: 23/5/26 18:30 start (doors 18:15)

Where: 26a Crwys Road, CF24 4NL

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There will be books available to buy at the event.

There is an option to pay what you can as we would like to keep this event accessible for all. There is a limited number of PWYC tickets so please only use it if you need to.

Follow this link for PWYC 

About the books:

Inhale/Exile is the debut poetry collection by Abeer Ameer. Inspired by the many stories she heard as a child and visiting family in Iraq as an adult, Abeer has written a book that celebrates the resilience of her forebears and extended family in Baghdad and around the world. The book presents a range of characters in a mixture of political and personal poems; ordinary people living in extraordinary circumstances. Formally diverse, using both traditional and experimental methods, these poems are also full of empathy and suffused with a quietly persistent faith.

You'll Never Be Anyone Else presents a direct and assured voice, demanding that we think carefully about what it takes to reconcile being different. She advises the reader to ‘Stop drinking the poison / labelled “Hate me.” / It’s that simple. I didn’t say easy.’ Clyne also has an alter-ego “Girl Golem” reminiscent of a superhero but based on the mythical man made from clay and spells to protect Jewish people from persecution. Through this empowering persona, Clyne opens up an exploration of Jewish and lesbian identity. Surveying attitudes in the present day and in the past, these poems explore migrant heritage, sexual identity, domestic violence and ageing.

Elizabeth Parker’s second collection Cormorant explores its titular bird from all angles: from diving cormorants to cormorants in flight, cormorants in motion and also in stillness. The bird itself is always untameable and irreducible to human impressions, but is bound through poetry with a family history, legacy, and losses.

The cormorant is the present and the past, both part of and beyond these human stories. It can be an omen, the devil, the enemy of anglers, or perhaps just an elusive subject watched by humans.

The poems in Robert Walton’s Sax Burglar Blues range from vivid memories of childhood, such as  ‘Twm Siôn Cati’ where a teacher ‘wiry-haired, fierce-eyed’ brings a fictional villain to life, banging out rhythms with her shoe on the floor of a Cardiff classroom, to memories of a rock‘n’roll influenced youth on the back of the Dusty Springfield night bus, or an archetypal narrative of getting kicked out of a band just before they hit the big time (‘Three Out of Four Original Members’).
Walton is also possessed of (and by) a keen socio-political sensibility, which takes aim via pointed satire, quite literally in the downright fury of ‘Closing Down’ in which the narrator fantasizes pulling a gun on the retail staff who discount all the potential profit away from books (a vision that all of us who retail the word will understand). There is also the surreal lampoon of his canary Joey’s candidacy for the presidency.

In Visiting the Minotaur, Claire Williamson’s inventive and intensely felt collection, the poet must enter a labyrinth of her own complicated family history, a history beset with secrets and lies, in order to come to terms with her own identity.  She borrows from myths, histories, careful observations of nature, of city life, in order to fashion her artful meditations on experience and mortality.

About the poets:

Abeer Ameer is a poet of Iraqi heritage who lives in Cardiff. Her poems have appeared widely in journals including The Rialto, Magma, The Poetry Review, and Poetry Wales. Her debut poetry collection, Inhale/Exile, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2022. Her poem ‘at least’ won the Forward Prize 2025 for the Best Single Poem – Written category. She is currently working on her second poetry collection and shares readings of poems on
YouTube.

Rachael Clyne is a retired psychotherapist from Glastonbury. Her prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams) concerns our broken connection with nature and eco-issues. Both her pamphlet, Girl Golem (4Word) and her latest collection, You'll Never Be Anyone Else (Seren Book) explore her journey to reconcile her identity and sense of otherness, including migrant heritage, domestic violence and LGBTQ+ Rachael’s treats even dark topics with wit and colourful imagery. "Clyne wields words with scalpel-like precision, the result might be sharp and shocking, but ultimately healing: her honesty and humour play a great part." Mab Jones: Buzz journal.

Elizabeth Parker is a co-founder of The Spoke. She co-hosted Bristol poetry night Under The Red Guitar. Her pamphlet Antinopolis was published by Eyewear in 2016. Her collection In Her Shambles was published by Seren in 2018. Her second Seren collection, Cormorant, was published in February 2024. Elizabeth grew up in The Forest of Dean and now lives in Bristol with her partner and two sons. She was a secondary school English teacher and is working on two novels inspired by her experiences.

Robert Walton is Cardiff born and bred but now lives in Bristol. Three times winner of the North American Festival of Wales Poetry Prize, he has a PhD in Creative Writing from Cardiff University, where he taught the subject until 2022. Bob co-runs an online community writing group and is editor of Red Guitar Poetry Press. His second collection, Sax Burglar Blues, is published by Seren Books and his third is in the wings. 

Claire Williamson's latest publication Visiting the Minotaur (2018) draws on themes of grief, art and family. Recently, she has been writing about illness and creating poem portraits to commemorate Vincent van Gogh, which touch on creativity and mental health. Claire is a specialist in therapeutic writing and is currently a Royal Literary Fund fellow at UWE, and works with cancer patients at Southmead Hospital, as well as 1-1 and groups.

Accessibility:

We ask in our confirmation email if you have any access needs, we will do everything we can to accommodate them. If you would like to reach out before booking you can email us lily@bookspacecardiff.co.uk or use our contact form.

We are wheelchair accessible. We have a tempory ramp we can put out to get in over the small step and once inside the shop floor is even. If you want to find out more about how to get here, check out our about page.

Our refund policy:

If you can't make the event anymore after you've booked do let us know. If you tell us 24 or more hours before the event we will be able to refund your ticket price minus the processing fee that Shopify charges us for the original transaction.