Our next Heard Word featured guest is CW Blackburn, poet, mental health advocate, and radio host (Livewire Live on Hope FM). Join us and find out how CW pens words that live at the intersection of the universal and the deeply personal. That’s Monday the 13th of October, 2025 from 5-7pm GMT on Zoom.

To get feedback on your work sign up to be one of our presenting writers. There are both 20-minute (1500 words) and 5-minute (700 word “lighting round”) slots available. You can sign up here: https://docs.google.com/…/1TfI5…/edit…

Even if you aren’t presenting, please join us to offer feedback. Here is the link. https://bournemouth-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/85437743352…

A bit more about our Featured Writer:

C.W. Blackburn is a poet and mental health advocate based in Bournemouth, whose work ranges from the raw and deeply personal to the metaphysical and mystical. He has authored five collections of poetry, including Where Words Are Yet To Be Spoken: Poems for Presence and One Hundred Colours of Being: Poems in the Spirit of Zen. His work has also been published in numerous magazines and journals, such as Kindred Spirit, Presence, Poetry for Mental Health, Dreich, The Hamblin Vision, Alien Buddha Zine and Ribbons.

Since January 2022, C.W. has become a well-known figure in the Bournemouth community, promoting poetry as an art form and as a means of self-realisation and expression. He currently co-hosts The Platform open mic night with Abby G. Poetree, is involved in curating and presenting the poetry, spoken word and arts show on Hope FM’s Livewire Live and organises the Words for Wellbeing writers haven and Writing on the Wall poetry board at Bournemouth Library, in association with Bournemouth Writing Festival. He has spun Words for Wellbeing out into four successful and well-regarded poetry events, with a fifth and sixth upcoming before the end of 2025. In 2024, he worked as a freelance editor on Fiona Robertson’s Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart and Gabriel Moreno’s Nights in the Belly of Bohemia collections.

His proudest moments as a writer so far were being featured in the April 2025 issue of Dorset Magazine, in reference to his work on Words for Wellbeing for the Writing Festival, and having a tanka poem read out on BBC Radio 4’s The Shipping Forecast in November 2023.

He will be appearing at the Blandford Literary Festival in November 2025 for a special spotlight reading at their Friday night opening event.