Events By Location

 Featuring Sarah-Jane Dobner, Professor Terry Gifford, Libby Houston, Samantha Walton and Dave Wynne-Jones

Sarah-Jane Dobner wrote Banff-winning book A Feeling for Rock - a mix of poetry, cartoons, vignettes and polemic. Her poems have been published in Alpinist, Climber and UKC, along with other prose pieces. In 2021 she won the Shextreme prize for adventure poetry. She is currently working on a crag destination guide in poetry-picture format.

Professor Terry Gifford was for 21 years Director of the annual International Festival of Mountaineering Literature, in the last years at Kendal Mountain Festival. A former Chair of the Mountain Heritage Trust, his collected climbing essays were published in 2004 as Joy of Climbing and his eighth collection poetry is a Feasst of Fools (2018).

Libby Houston has tackled hawser-laid rope, nail-them-yourself boots, a manual typewriter, carbon paper, Beatnik poetry readings, hitch-hiking tales; then the National Poetry Secretariat, and London's first climbing walls; then the Avon Gorge. Overt the decades Libby has read her work across the world (recently Roundhouse Camden Town, Bluecoat Centre Liverpool, sung it on Dutch radio, led courses and workshops, and is now a professional rope access botanist, discover of new tree species here, with nature notes in Avon climbing guides. Selected poems Cover of Darkness (Slow Dancer Press, 1998, working on new collection not before time.

Samantha Walton is a writer and academic based in Bristol and Bath. Her non-fiction books Everybody needs beauty: In search of the nature cure (2021) and The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought (2020) are published by Bloomsbury. She has published a poetry collection, Self Heal (Boiler House Press, 2018) and a pamphlet, Bad Moon (Spam,2020). Samantha is Professor of Modern Literature and runs the Research Centre for Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University.

Dave Wynne-Jones spent 20 years teaching English before leaving to gain an MA in creative writing at MMU and publish "Kidstuff" a collection of poems to share with children. He then scratched a living writing articles for outdoor magazines and organising expeditions. He's published two mountaineering non-fiction books, 4000m Climbing the highest Mountains of the Alps and An Expedition Handbook, which led to a poetry pamphlet, The Way Taken, based on his first expedition to China, which explores different ways of writing about climbing.

There will also be an open-mic where others will be welcome to read a single poem or short prose extract, either their own or one from a favourite writer, but please keep them to 40 lines. This will be bookable by emailing Dave Wynne-Jones on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

All welcome. No charge for Alpine Club and Eagle Ski Club members, otherwise please make a donation of £5 to the Montane Alpine Club Climbing Fund via one of the organisers.

Venue: John Sebastian Lightship, Bathurst Parade, Bristol BS1 6UB