Hello and welcome to another Caffe Grande Slam. This month, we will, yet again, have room for up to twelve poets to battle it out over 3 minutes to win the audience's poetical hearts. Food and drink are available to purchase at our lovely venue, The Albionn.
We will have our winner from last month giving us 10 minutes of their best, and, we shall also be spoiling you all by having double the value and delight in the form of a double headliner! They are:
Michael W. Thomas’s latest poetry collections are Nothing Louche or Bohemian (with Tina Cole) and A Time for Such a Word (both Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (KDP / Swan Village Reporter). His work has appeared in, among others, The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and The Times Literary Supplement. He is on the editorial board of Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies (University of Bialystok, Poland). His competition successes include The Housman Poetry Prize and The Buzzwords Prize. For several years he was Poet-in-Residence at the Robert Frost Festival, Key West, Florida. As a result he has the honorary title of Poet-at-Large in the Key West Navy of the Conch Republic, which apparently entitles him to free drinks in certain Caribbean bars (which ones are yet to be specified). Website: www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
Tina Cole was born in the Black Country and after far too many years has retired to rural Herefordshire near Ludlow. She has four published pamphlets, I Almost Knew You, (2018) Forged/ Yaffle Press, (2022) What it Was Mark Time Books (2023) and Nothing Louche or Bohemian/ Black Pear Press (2025) and completed an M.A. in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2023. Her work focuses on both the physical and emotional landscapes of her childhood and ancestry. Nothing Louche or Bohemian, charts a dialogue (alongside Michael Thomas ) of mutual childhood histories.
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