Projects & Residencies

For this residency with Ledbury Poetry Festival, Beth transformed The Poetry Machine into a “Poetry Time Machine” as an imaginative way to gather local community members’ visions for the clocktower, a historic local building that has since been developed into The Poetry House at the heart of Ledbury.

The consultations started at a time when masks felt advisable for extra caution, so the Time Machine theme was also a good excuse to jazz up the safety visor!

The poems, created with groups of school children, local councillors, local community group members and passers-by across a series of workshops and Poetry Time Machine days, were woven into the funding application for developing this building into a community venue for all.

Beth was appointed as the Poet in Residence for Lyra, Bristol’s Poetry Festival, in 2021. Passionate about advocating for green spaces as antidotes to stress and places of quality time for loved ones, Beth chose to focus on parks and outdoor spaces across Bristol. She spent this month-long residency co-creating poetry with groups who care for their local outdoor space, from established Friends of Parks groups to an intergenerational group of nursery children and older adults, to a newly-sprung gardening club of residents who have reclaimed their local community garden. 

Beth created a downloadable online writing pack that was available until the next festival, alongside a video of her residency poem The Playground of Learning #BristolWriteOutside.

Beth took The Poetry Machine to Lion’s Walk in Colchester and spent two days talking to passers-by and shop-holders, co-creating beautiful in situ poems for them to take away. With their permission, the words and emotions they contributed, along with the themes Beth encountered when researching the history of Lion’s Walk, were woven into a poem that Beth shared with contributors for further feedback. The poem was transformed into a beautiful light installation by fra creative and GoBo Plus, so that community members will walk through their own words for years to come.

Starting with poetry and collage workshops at the Teenage & Young Adults unit in Bristol Haematology & Oncology Centre, followed by a one-year residency at South Bristol Community Hospital, Beth’s residency extended across all ten hospitals in 2020. The residency is co-funded by Bristol & Weston Hospitals Charity, who make beautiful experiences possible for patients and staff across the Trust.

3 memorable moments:

• Creating a poem, Thread, with colleagues working in the Intensive Trauma Unit during the pandemic, which was given to families and patients along with pairs of knitted hearts while visiting was restricted.
• Being alongside a staff member as she wrote her first poem about her stethoscope, which was later published in These Are The Hands, the NHS anthology. Watching Katrina read this poem at a live event with Michael Rosen.
• Creating Listen In, an audio artwork that weaves staff voices with poetry, song and harp, in collaboration with the Trust Musicians in Residence. Performing with the staff choir at Arts & Health festival in Weston-super-Mare and as part of a national NHS 75th anniversary project, Our NHS Stories.

Beth works remotely and in-person across Oxford’s hospitals, enabling staff members to express their thoughts and feelings about their work and each other. The poems are typewritten, framed and displayed in staff rooms and foyers, with thanks to funding by Oxford Hospitals Charity.

3 memorable moments:

• Creating a poem with the Vaccination Team that administered the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine during the Covid pandemic. This poem is displayed alongside a piece of artwork by Harriet Riddell in the John Radcliffe Hospital.
• Visiting the Trust’s four hospital sites with The Poetry Machine to co-create lines of poetry that formed the basis of a Trust Poem. The staff who contributed to this poem were invited to read their lines as part of a video celebrating the distinctive character of each hospital along with a collective Trust identity.
• Hosting a poetry and collage consultation workshop with staff members at the new Education Centre, along with conversations at The Poetry Machine that inspired a poem. Lines of this poem are being made into a piece of artwork by a lettering artist and will be incorporated into the fabric of the building.

Beth was based in Liverpool between 2022-early 2024. During that time, she was the Poet in Residence for the Clatterbridge, one of the UK’s leading cancer centres. This experience of working with patients and relatives at various points in their cancer journey was a privilege. 

3 memorable moments:

• Helping patients in the Teenage & Young Adults unit to express whatever is on their mind, from celebrating their treatment halfway point to making a poem for their partner to sharing their lifelong love of Liverpool Football Club.
• Enabling couples, friends and families to enjoy a creative escape together, describing the full range of human emotions – everyday acts of love, laugh-out-loud antics, messages of hope, even helping someone to write their marriage proposal poem.
• Working with a Clatterbridge Musician in Residence, Claire Bloor, to create a collection of Sea Shanty-inspired songs with lyrics based on patients’ verbatim poems and composed in response to each person’s musical wishes.

Beth was commissioned by Art Acumen to co-create a poetry triptych for law firm Osborne Clarke’s new home in Bristol, Halo. The poems have inspired 3 beautiful paper-cut artworks by Sarah Dennis and the poetry and paper-cut pieces are displayed together at Halo. Together, they illuminate the images in staff members’ personal stories.

The trio of poems have woven words and themes, gathered through workshops and a digital questionnaire. During the writing workshops, Beth designed a series of accessible prompts to enable staff members to write and speak courageously and authentically about their decarbonisation journeys, using their office collection of decarbonisation-themed artwork as visual inspiration. Read them here.

At the 2022 WACL Conference, hosted by Sky, Beth hosted refreshing poetry moments throughout the day, starting with a performance of her own poetry on resonant themes of authenticity, mentorship and empowerment. She guided hundreds of online delegates through a micro writing workshop and read out a selection of the delegate-written poems that were bravely shared in the chat. To close the event, Beth read a key-note poem, gathered from words spoken by delegates and speakers throughout the conference. The poem was shared with delegates afterwards so they can always read it and re-experience the feeling of intense inspiration that is at its most powerful in the closing moments of a successful conference.

As team members arrived at the hotel conference room, they noticed an unexpected sight: a Poetry Machine! Beth welcomed people to create personal poems with her in the coffee breaks. She hosted a guided poetry writing workshop, inspiring team-members to be braver in using their voices for change. Throughout the day, Beth gathered words, phrases and resonant moments into a verbatim poem that she performed at the end of the event, bringing home the event’s core message of helping to build a better future through the words of speakers and team-members. It was inspiring to work with this team and learn how advertising and communication can amplify climate change and social justice causes. The poem was shared with delegates after the event, was described as “so valuable” by the organisers, and received “brilliant and positive feedback” from attendees.