Two poets with disabilities who read together at Cheltenham poetry festival on Monday night have linked up to run an online campaign against the firm used by the government to help determine whether people are able to work. Mark Burnhope, pictured, and Daniel Sluman, are with Sophie Mayer involved with Fit To Work: Poets Against Atos, which is described as an online database “of poets and punks, scribes and scroungers protesting the involvement of Atos Healthcare UK” in disability and work assessments. They appeared together in Cheltenham to read at Jamie’s Italian, which was formerly the county court. Sluman, who lost a leg to bone cancer as a child, said he tried to avoid “getting bogged down in sentimentality … probably the weakest form of writing you can have”.  The word “honesty” kept cropping up as he spoke between poems, which he said were often about “connecting a person with a universal … that’s what I like to do a lot”. His collection, Absence has a Weight of its Own, is published by Nine Arches Press. 

Burnhope, who spoke with wry, self-deprecating humour, introduced one poem as “two ideas wazzed up, as Jamie Oliver might say”. He has spina bifida and hydrocephalus, which means memory loss and trouble in concentration: “Parts of my brain that have been damaged are to do with logic. Often I have to find emotional motivation to do certain jobs.”

He read a poem about disability hate crime, the only time he had experienced it. A drunken and drugged young woman tottered up to him one night in town, slurred: “I never knew you people went clubbing,” and then smeared the remains of a McDonald’s in his face. Burnhope’s pamphlet The Snowboy is published by Salt. 

Earlier in the evening Poetry Factory, a Cheltenham-based poetry collective of six published and prize-winning poets, showcased their wealth of talent at Oxfam Bookshop. First up was Chaucer Cameron, whose poems included one about an anti-burglar device at Freud’s Vienna office. David Clarke, another Flarestack pamphlet competition winner last year, read a poem about Lenin’s enjoyment of the English music hall, and one called See England By Train, including its “lines of ragged knickers”. A poem by Anna Saunders about ghosts spoke of  “a bruise on the air / a thickening of the atmosphere”, while examples of Philip Rush’s urbane oeuvre included references to Bowie, Jagger, Marvin Gaye, St Augustine, Dylan and Spider-Man.

Sharon Larkin, who has a poem in the recent Heart Shoots anthology, was fascinated by science, particularly chemistry and physics, as well as the “shamans and charlatans” who whip up apocalyptic fear. Avril Staple delighted in showing us a collection of travelling show exhibits – the bearded lady who shaved, her husband with three breasts – and concluded with a poem titled The Show Must Go On. Maybe a reference to Cheltenham poetry festival itself? I can only agree.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT … The performers may have outnumbered  the audience – even including the burgeoning media section – at the Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra event at the Copa on Tuesday night. But those that stayed away missed a treat for the senses. A string of poets, including local lad, Stroud’s Adam Horovitz, went up to the mic while various musical activities went on behind them. Instruments included a wine glass and an accordion.  The piece was titled So It Goes, repeated as a mantra throughout, and a reference to Kurt Vonnegut’s sci-fi/second  world war novel  Slaughterhouse-Five.  As the mastermind of the performance, Jon Andriessen, explained afterwards, there had been no rehearsals:  “The clue’s in the name.” He did not even ask to see the poets’ contributions in advance. The video backdrop of outer space images added to the ambience, both stimulating and strangely relaxing, even if at the end the audience took a little time to realise it was all over and it was time to applaud. As Spock might have said: “It may be poetry, Jim, but not as we know it.”

You can read more about the festival here 

WEDNESDAY AT THE FESTIVAL

Cheltenham Poetry Society showcase, Cafe Rouge, 6-7pm. £5/£4.

All That Lives with Valerie Laws, Cafe Rouge, 8-9pm. £8/£6.

Some Of These Things Are Beautiful, a show by Dan Holloway, with James Webster and Words Escape Me. The Strand, 8.45-10pm. £7/£5. 

PHOTOGRAPH: GREG FREEMAN