Landscapes of Connection
Beth Calverley
Thursday 22nd October – 7.30pm
Chew Valley Library, Bishop Sutton
An evening of nature, poetry, and all kinds of love
Beth Calverley is a writer, performer, and creative facilitator, who grew up in the Chew Valley. Her work is inspired by powerful moments of connection between people and places – surprising encounters, hard conversations, and acts of love. Join us in Bishop Sutton Library, where Beth will guide you on a magic carpet ride through a landscape of human and more-than-human relationships. You’ll go home feeling inspired to message a friend, squeeze someone, put down roots, or pull up some astroturf.
Thu, 22 October 2026 – 19.30
Chew Valley Library
The Link
Bishop Sutton
Bristol
BS39 5UU
Age: 14+
No refunds
Running time:
45 mins (approximately)
More about Beth
Beth has made a career taking poetry where it’s most needed. As founder of The Poetry Machine, Beth she travels to places of work, care, learning and play – from hospital wards to wildflower meadows, classrooms to coastlines, and workplaces to woodlands.
Beth has served as Poet in Residence at Bristol NHS Foundation Trust since 2019. Her other notable residencies include Baddesley Clinton National Trust, Oxford NHS Trust, Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Ledbury Poetry House, and the Bristol Poetry Festival. A Bristol Life Awards Arts Finalist and Roundhouse Slam Finalist, Beth has collaborated with major broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, and Sky, as well as Oh Magazine and Ocado Life Magazine.
Her environmental and community work spans collaborations with The Prince’s Trust, The National Trust, Super Culture, the Mendip Hills National Landscape, the Somerset & Devon Wildlife Trusts, and many more. She also co-creates poetry online, over the phone, and across national radio airwaves. Her 2022 TEDx talk, Poetry at Work, describes her experiences of bringing poetry into challenging work environments.
Beth’s debut collection, Brave Faces & Other Smiles (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), explores the countless, complex reasons why we smile. Benjamin Zephaniah praised it as “a great collection with a honest, real theme.” Beth is also part of House of Figs, a music and poetry duo alongside musician Beth Roberts. Supported by Theatre Royal Plymouth and Valley Arts, their gig-theatre show The Awkward Guide to Friendship moves audiences to tears of laughter and recognition across UK theatres, libraries, village halls, and introvert-friendly festival spaces.
“Beth Calverley makes us attend differently to ordinary things – a single look can be ‘a glass of cold water’, a room ‘a tangle / of buttery light’, a smile ‘a too- / tight scrunchy’. We should all smile more, and we should all read more poetry.” – Helen Mort
“Beth Calverley is a distinctive and necessary voice. Her subject is happiness – not the clichéed version but the hard won and realistic sort with all its difficulties visible.” – Tom Sastry
“If poetry could hold your hand, this is what it would feel like.” – Malaika Kegode