Poet Beth Calverley joins the National Festival of Making with her magical Poetry Machine.

Beth will ask you some gentle questions and weave your words into a typewritten poem to take away with you. Just follow the clatter of her vintage typewriter and look out for the machine’s bright yellow umbrella, flagpole and bubble engine.

Feel free to come on your own or bring a friend or group. Pop by and sign up on Beth’s chalkboard.

Beth Calverley is a poet, performer, facilitator and founder of The Poetry Machine. Her writing delights in the weird and wonderful things we think, say and do when we’re trying to belong.

Beth is Poet in Residence at University Hospitals Bristol & Weston NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford University Hospitals NHS FT and the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool. She has been a Poet in Residence for The Poetry House in Ledbury (2021-22), a Bristol Poetry Festival Resident Poet (2021), a Bristol Life Awards Arts Finalist (2020), and a Roundhouse Slam Finalist (2018). She has worked with the BBC, ITV, Sky, and many more. 

Beth travels across the country to places of work, care, learning and play – from hospitals to festivals, weddings to woodlands, high streets to heritage sites, schools to universities, office blocks to theatres – performing, facilitating and co-creating poetry.