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Mel Wardle Woodend is Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2019-2022. She is a performance and published poet, who has written eight poetry books to date, including two dyslexia friendly children’s poetry books, her nature collection Natural Colours (2017), mental health collection Just a Thought (2019), and Thirty (2020) created during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown during the spring of 2020, and inspired by the daily prompts from National / Global Poetry Writing Month in April 2020.

 

In 2018, Mel published a full-length children’s story book; Tails of a Little Brown Mouse. She edited and compiled The Friendship Collection; a set of anthologies comprising children’s stories, poetry, and short stories and young adult fiction, as well as two charity poetry anthologies for There Is No Planet B Stafford in 2018, and 2019 respectively. She has since published charity poetry anthologies: One Hundred Memories (2019) in aid of Alzheimer's Society, Poetic Vision (2020) in support of The Guide Dogs for the Blind, and Purrfect Poems (2020) in support of Cats Protection, through her dyslexia friendly small press Dream Well Writing Ltd.


Mel is one half of spoken word event WORD Stafford and organises and participates in poetry slams and spoken word events including storytelling, poetry film events and competitions, and poetry events to support awareness raising days and initiatives both nationally and globally. Mel additionally facilitates poetry workshops in schools and libraries around Staffordshire and the West Midlands, has ten years’ experience as a teaching assistant in primary and secondary schools, holds an MA in Creative Writing and works full-time as a writer and performance poet.

 

A keen reader, writer and bodyboarder, her family, her animals, her interactions with the people she encounters on her journey, and the natural world around her all inspire her work.

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