Satellite of Love: Sophie Dumont; Meg Avon; Caleb Parkin - Sculling Launch

Wed Oct 22 2025 at 07:00 pm to 10:00 pm UTC+01:00

John Sebastian Flagship | Bristol

Satellite of Love: Sophie Dumont; Meg Avon; Caleb Parkin - Sculling Launch
Advertisement
https://hdfst.uk/e137264
Satellite of Love Poetry and Spoken Word run monthly events, workshops and writing retreats. Our monthly events at the Loco Klub offer a platform for local and touring poets, open mic and our Community Poem.
All languages welcome.
The venue accessibility information can be found here https://www.locoklub.com/access-info/ - "The Loco Klub is an inclusive venue, we hold a Silver Award from Attitude is Everything and we welcome D/deaf and disabled customers"
Open mic sign ups are currently closed. They will open after our September event finishes.
We will have 10 'on the door' open mic slots available on the night from 7pm. If we are over-subscribed we will draw names from a hat.
Doors & Bar open - 7pm
Night starts - 7:30pm
Night ends - 10:30pm
The Loco Klub
Nr Temple Meads
Clock Tower Yard
Bristol
BS1 6QH
***
Join us for an evening of words, water, and wonder as we launch Sophie Dumont’s debut poetry collection Sculling. This is not just a book launch – it’s a celebration of the Bristol’s River Avon.
Lyrical, tender and fierce, Sculling traces grief, desire, and transformation through the movement of rivers, asking how we live, love, and let go.
Sophie will be supported by poetry from Bristol’s Caleb Parkin and Meg Avon.
Let’s create an Avon-loving evening rippling with community, mourning and merrymaking!
Dress code: Your rivery finest. Think river silks, moonlight sequins, driftwood crowns – anything that makes you feel like part of the tide.
About Sculling:
In her unflinching and tenderly obsessive collection, Sculling, poet Sophie Dumont explores a deeply personal relationship to the River Avon, as she circles the curses that unravel from a canoe club.
At the age of sixteen, Sophie Dumont trained to be a canoe coach before her own coach and partner of three years died suddenly in an aquaplaning road accident, which led to five of his organs continuing at least seven people’s lives. His heart was donated to a young man studying in the same city as he did.
Using the kayak as a vessel to traverse life’s accumulation of losses, Sculling speaks of how this bereavement caused Dumont to reflect on her relationship to bodies of water, from her own body to the state of pollution in UK rivers. Here, she explores the campaign for rivers to be given personhood status for rights to protection and inspects the symbiosis of her body and the river’s.
Sculling is a powerful investigation into categories of haunting, from a body living on through donated organs, through dementia’s slow erasure, and through witnessing her niece learn object permanence – that things continue to exist when they are not visible.
In her fiercely vulnerable and meticulous debut, Dumont probes the urge to call out when under a bridge, to hear oneself ricocheted back, changed:
‘. . . a boy in a red cap opens his throat, throws sound
into shadows, as we’ve all done,
in the reckless hope of its return.’
Image credit: Jae Frederick
About Sophie:
Sophie Dumont is a poet and copywriter based in Bristol and Bath. Her poetry won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize and has appeared in The Rialto, Magma, The Moth, Ink Sweat and Tears and Mslexia among others. Dumont has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has held writing residencies along Bristol Harbourside with Boat Poets and Exeter Quay through Literature Works.
About Meg:
Meg Avon of The River Bride is a Bristol-based celebrant, poet, activist, performance artist and environmental romantic. From Meg: "In June 2023, I married my local river the Bristol Urban Avon. I married them not just because I love the river deeply, but because I wanted to raise awareness about river pollution with a story that is engaging. Two years on and the relationship is still going strong. I have left my job as a community worker to pursue a career as a writer and campaigner, touring my first collection of poetry My Avon earlier this year."
About Caleb:
Caleb Parkin was Bristol City Poet 2020 – 22. He’s published three pamphlets and his debut collection, This Fruiting Body was longlisted for the Laurel Prize; his second, Mingle, was published Oct 2024. He’s a PhD researcher with RENEW Biodiversity at the University of Exeter, and an experienced tutor and workshop leader.
Image credit: Vonalina Cake
Advertisement

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

John Sebastian Flagship, Bristol, United Kingdom

Sharing is Caring:

More Events in Bristol

NIGHT CREATURES Linocut Workshop
Wed, 22 Oct at 06:00 pm NIGHT CREATURES Linocut Workshop

The Victoria Park

Afghani Cookery Class with Vida | Veg Friendly | BRISTOL Training Class
Wed, 22 Oct at 06:15 pm Afghani Cookery Class with Vida | Veg Friendly | BRISTOL Training Class

Coexist Community Kitchen

Mouth Culture live at Thekla
Wed, 22 Oct at 06:30 pm Mouth Culture live at Thekla

Thekla, The Grove, BS1 4RB Bristol, United Kingdom

The Harold made easy with Maria Peters
Wed, 22 Oct at 06:30 pm The Harold made easy with Maria Peters

50 St Paul's Road, BS8 1LP Bristol, United Kingdom

Mitch Rowland at The Fleece, Bristol - Wed 22nd Oct 2025
Wed, 22 Oct at 07:30 pm Mitch Rowland at The Fleece, Bristol - Wed 22nd Oct 2025

12 Saint Thomas Street,Bristol,BS1 6JJ,GB

Martha Tilston @ Strange Brew - BRISTOL
Wed, 22 Oct at 07:30 pm Martha Tilston @ Strange Brew - BRISTOL

Strange Brew

Ocean Film Festival - Bristol - 22 October 2025
Wed, 22 Oct at 07:30 pm Ocean Film Festival - Bristol - 22 October 2025

Redgrave Theatre

Ottinger's Berlin Trilogy:\nDorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press
Wed, 22 Oct at 07:30 pm Ottinger's Berlin Trilogy: Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press

Dove Street South, Bristol

Esther Swift - scottish harpist and singer
Wed, 22 Oct at 07:30 pm Esther Swift - scottish harpist and singer

To The Moon

Bristol is Happening!

Never miss your favorite happenings again!

Explore Bristol Events