Performer and poet Karen Gemma Brewer will launch her latest book at the Cellar Bards.

She’ll begin her promotional tour for her stunning new collection Dancing in the Sun at Cardigan’s only regular spoken word event this Friday, 16 September.

Doors open at 7.30pm at the Cellar Bar, Quay Street, Cardigan. Entry is £3. People can sign up on the door for open mic slots.

A two-time winner of the Tim Williams Performance Poetry Award, Karen has toured two one-woman shows – Seeds From A Dandelion (2017) and Dissident Sausage (2019), performed and acted on film, TV, radio and stage, at festivals, theatres, pubs, clubs, supermarkets, shops, colleges, schools and in the street.

Her writing combines emotion and mundanity with a strong sense of the absurd, has been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK, Europe and USA and translated into Welsh, Italian and Romanian.

Dancing In The Sun is Karen’s second collection of poems, her first, Seeds From A Dandelion (2017) was re-issued in 2021. She is editor of Write It Out - new LGBTQ+ writing from Ceredigion & Carmarthenshire (2019). A first collection of short stories, From Mars To Cilcennin is due in 2023.

Writer Robert Minhinnick described Karen’s latest book and performance as “irreverent, sexy, political in the best way, and as good in live performance as on the page, Karen Gemma Brewer is a writer to watch and enjoy!”

Cellar Bards co-organiser Jackie Biggs said: “This accomplished new collection of poetry from Karen Gemma Brewer is a brilliant mix of sharp wit, irony, gentle humour and moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity, all adroitly merged with serious takes on some of the most disturbing problems of our time.

“Through some sublimely surreal scenarios Brewer manages to elucidate with sensitivity and humour some of the deeply disturbing situations in which we find ourselves as individuals and as a species.

“Yet there are many light-hearted moments and she cleverly entertains us, so that we can laugh at ourselves and our world, and we can still ‘smile, be happy and have fun’, in spite of it all. Just what we need.”

See The Cellar Bards Facebook or Twitter for more information.