The evening started with Mr A. Reading tales from the diary of his departed aunty. The tale was polite and civilised but had a death count that any horror movie would be proud of.

Trevor Coombs introduced the evening putting the audience in their place. A story that accurately portrayed the role of the audience yet made you feel aware of your presence in the Thunderbolt in a strange and disturbing way.

Trevor’s writing works because he fuses his powerful, detailed observations with a mastery of English and a sense of rhythm and pace that drives the tale to a controlled yet surprising conclusion; a true joy for the audience.

Joel Kirby is a talented and incredible singer songwriter. His words and music capture the dark and tragic sides of human life underneath the smiles and happy sensations of existence. Joined in the second half by  John Stirling on bass it added a dimension to the music and performance. With John, Joel was more comfortable on stage and with rapport between them down to meaningful eye contact it was a great joy. Musically they did some wonderful tricks; on one song John took the lead with the bass while Joel kept rhythm.

The audience were spell bound throughout the evening from Mr A to Joel K, no one drew any z’s.

Last minute guest Mr A started of proceedings with a slightly different take on Victorian feminine manners than normally reported. His manner and dress suited the style and manner of his reading. Mr A is a performer who we will be hearing more from.

Emma Newman read beautifully. Initially nervous, she warmed into the atmosphere of The Thunderbolt and read from her collection of short stories and the introduction to her teen novel “20 Years Later”. Her stories captivated the audience, the intensity, passion and detail were wonderfully portrayed in her voice. Her tales had a darker and more evil side to them than her public image. She is an active writer reading and promoting her work around the country, do catch her if she is reading near you.

Angie Belcher is a talented poet and comedian, living round the corner from the pub she was more at home here than most of our guests. Funny, crude and incredibly charming she wowed what was her home audience. Angie’s encore had the crowd whooping and cheering.

The Word of Mouth audience enjoyed the evening immensely and all the evening’s writers found new fans.

We want to push what we’ve done this year further and bring back some old favourites.

We will be spending January getting the programme finalised look out for the flyers and check here for future notifications.

Bohdan is a performance poet and slam host born in Warsaw, Poland, currently based in the UK, where he is putting the finishing touches to a PhD in poetry translation.

Before his move to England, Bohdan started the first poetry slam series in his country, introducing Poles to spoken word and creating a platform for a whole new generation of performers.

Bohdan has travelled around Europe (with some forays into North America) with his poetry; he represented Poland at the 2007 Poetry Slam World Cup in Paris (and was the only European poet to reach the finals), proudly wore the title of the 2008 Hammer & Tongue Oxford Season Slam Champion, and was an artist in residence at the European Poetry Slam Days in Berlin in 2009.

He has a keen interest in literary translation and ways in which it can be used in performance, and actively pursues collaborations with other poets as well as artists from fields such as photography, video, music, and dance.

Bohdan derives a perverse pleasure from inflicting poems in Polish on unsuspecting international audiences. He has a tendency to speak too much, enjoys walking, but not chewing gum, and still hopes to learn to play bass one day. He also finds writing about himself in the third person has lost a lot of its lustre since the advent of social networking sites.

Visit his website.

Lucy English was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in London. She studied English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, and has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.

She has three novels published by Fourth Estate: Selfish People (1998), set in contemporary Bristol; Children of Light (1999); and Our Dancing Days(2000), set in a Suffolk commune in the 1970s.

She is best known as a performance poet, winning the first Bristol Poetry Slam in 1996, and going on to tour worldwide, performing her poetry at several international festivals including the Edinburgh Fringe, Austin International Poetry Festival, Wordfest, at Calgary in Canada and The Cuirt in Galway, Ireland.  Her poetry has also been published in a variety of anthologies.

In 2003 she co-ordinated the International Conference in the writing and practice of performance poetry at Bath Spa University and since then run the only performance poetry module at a UK university.  In 2006 she was artistic director of Apples and Snakes Poetry Tour, Exposed. In 2007, she was a finalist in the first BBC Radio 4 Poetry Slam.

She has toured Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Taiwan with the British Council running workshops and performances. She has also run workshops for the Arvon Foundation and The New Writing Partnership.

Lucy English is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She was the Royal Literature Fellow at the University of Swansea from 2003-6 and the Royal Literature Fellow at the University of Cardiff Institute during 2007-08.

Louise Gethin writes short stories influenced by love and death and anything in between. Bristol-based and bred, she has written a number of pieces that capture the flavour of city, including Ship’s Diary and Night Out. She is a co-founding member of the Bristol Writers Group and was included in this year’s anthology Hidden Bristol with her story Heaven’s Below. Her writing ambition is to publish her collection of short stories Anecdotes of Love and Death.

Peerless songs, rich vocals and lush, swooning cello define Furlined, a Bristol-based band formed in 2007 by singer-songwriter Neil Crossley and cellist Tegan Everett.

In 2008 the band released their debut album Love Comes In Canisters, which attracted much acclaim in publications such as Billboard, Clash and Rock ‘n’ Reel.

That same year, the duo recruited bassist Graham Dalzell and drummer Greg White into their ranks, and the subsequent four-piece have since blossomed into a powerful and magnetic live act.

In March 2012, Furlined will release their second album Win A Dream Wedding, and undertake a UK tour and press/radio campaign to promote the new release.

Luke Kennard and Tom Phillips performed sets that covered a wide range of styles swerving past haiku.

The evening started in blistering style with host, Byron Vincent, recounting his experience of his recent stay in one of Bristol’s finest establishments for nutters.

A great evening was had by all.

Word of Mouth are pleased to bring to Bristol audiences the exciting talent of Luke Kennard and bring to Bristol Old Vic a Word of Mouth at the Thunderbolt favourite Tom Phillips. Their work covers the spiring towers of literary academia to the depths of drunken, debauched nights in the bars and on the streets of Britain.

Word of Mouth at Bristol Old Vic
Monday 21November
Bristol Old Vic
Ticket Price: £8.00/£6.00 concs
Box office number: 0117 987 7877
Web: http://www.citychameleon.co.uk/wordofmouth

Luke Kennard is an award-winning poet, critic and short-fiction writer. He works as a research student and assistant teacher at the University of Exeter.

His first award-winning collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers was published by Stride Books in 2005 and won an award. He has worked as regional editor for Succour, a biannual journal of poetry and short fiction based at the University of Sussex and as an associated reader for The Kenyon Review. He is currently reviews editor of Exultations and Difficulties. His award-winning poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals. He exists in a permanent state of award-winning; he is like a giant magnet for awards or, if awards are moths, a giant light.

Tom Phillips has lived in Bristol for 25 years. After ten years working in radio, became a freelance journalist, and is now chief sub-editor for Venue magazine. He’s published two collections of poetry (Reversing into the Cold War and Burning Omaha) and eight of his plays have been staged in Bristol and Bath, including Hotel Illyria and Arbeit Macht Frei. Having spent three summers idling around eastern Europe by train, he’s now studying for a PhD in travel writing at Reading University.

David C Johnson is a prize-winning performance poet and Radio 4 playwright. His witty, observational poetry has entertained audiences at literary and poetry festivals in the UK and North America. He was Appledore Book Festival’s Garrick poet 2010 and Bristol Bike Festival 2010’s Poet in Residence. His latest collection is “Holding on and Looking Out” (Paralalia April 2010).

Claire Williamson has published two narrative poetry collections: Ride On (PoTA Press, 2005) and The Soulwater Pool (Poetry Can, 2008) and is currently working on a novel, The Scarab Bookshop. She has been on three National tours with Apples and Snakes in Exposed, Performance Prose with Words Allowed and Performance Poetry with Pimp$ of the Alphab£t Press. Claire lives in Bedminster with her poetry-phobic husband, two beautiful daughters and two equally scruffy dogs.

Britain is booming and Molly moves to London from deepest Cornwall full of naive dreams, high hopes and on a quest to make her life just like the movies. Then on 7/7/2005, she finds herself on a tube blown up by terrorists and her life is forced to take a different direction. Funny, frank and poetic; this is the true story of what happened next and how we put things back together after they’ve been blown apart.

Molly Naylor is a writer and performer. Her first solo show, Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010 to critical acclaim and is touring nationally throughout 2011. She has adapted the show for radio and it will air on BBC Radio 4 this year. Molly has written for the Independent and her poems have been featured on BBC Radio and in publications including The Rialto, the Londonist and Pen Pusher.  She has performed at a variety of festivals and events worldwide. Her first book – an illustrated text of her live show – is available from Nasty Little Press.

www.mollynaylor.com