ABOUT KEVAN

Kevan Manwaring is a writer, teacher and storyteller who lives in Bath. Holder of an MA in the Teaching and Practice in Creative Writing from Cardiff University, he teaches creative writing part-time for the Open University. He also runs freelance courses in storytelling and various aspects of the writing process  to a wide variety of students. As a professional storyteller he has appeared in numerous shows both solo and with Fire Springs, both in Britain and abroad (USA, Italy and Malta). He is the author of The Bardic Handbook, Lost Islands, the ongoing Windsmith books and his poems and articles have appeared in several magazines and anthologies. In 1998 he won the Bardic Chair in his adopted city. He co-runs the Bath Writers' Workshop & is the founder of Awen Publications.

 

 

‘Kevan Manwaring’s poems move between tradition, sacredness and the raw moment of modern life, in which his particular emphasis is to reveal what we experience as transparent, inviting us into questions of identity and value that are essential at this time. As a bard he is living what poets ‘should’ live for, with his heart at the centre, guided by an impressive and growing clarity of vision that enables him to penetrate his material accordingly. I have every sympathy with what he is attempting.’ 

Jay Ramsay, founder of Chrysalis: the poet in you, poetry editor of Kindred Spirit magazine

 

'MC for the evening is Kevan Manwaring, who manages both the evening and the Awen publishing house, and Kevan is a Romantic Poet of the extremely old school, to a point where it's quite easy to imagine him quaffing brandies and damning Napoleon alongside Keats and Shelley in a Wiltshire roadhouse, while the horses paw at the mud and press gangs lurk in the hedgerows. Performing from memory and only recoursing to his notes during one poem, the tone of the evening was set quite resolutely, and helping to sustain the mood, a stage backdrop of scarlet cloth and empty birdcages.'  Tasty review of Garden of Awen: The Thorny Rose, Chapel Arts Centre, Bath 7 February '10

 

Read his blog here