AN ART and a Drama teacher launched a poetry book with a twist to a packed room at Black Book Café on Wednesday, November 18.

Marcus Moore and James Milroy, both from the Stroud valleys, collaborated over their first book, Awesome…Zap An A-Z of History, which they self-published right here in Stroud.

The book, a “romp through the pages of history”, is full to the brim with themed witty poems, each word starting with a letter from the alphabet.

The poetry is written by Marcus, who taught Drama for eight years at Archway.

For his part James, an art teacher at Katherine Lady Barker School in Wotton-under-Edge, has drawn sequences of images to go with each poem in the style of a graphic novel.

The concept behind the book came from Marcus who had the idea to use the writing challenge as part of a creative workshop for his students. He wrote his first A-Z poem on the number 51 bus to Swindon.

At the launch Marcus welcomed people with an A-Z poem written specially for the event. He began: “James and I …

Are both clearly delighted, expected five gathering here instead just kind-a-like millions networking or phenomenologists quality rent-a-mob Stroud, thanks, um verily we’re xtatic yep, zinging.”

Drawing one of his pictures live, James then explained his creative process and talked about how he composed the images and how the two of them developed the book.

As the book explores different periods in history James had had to research a lot of what was going on at the time to come up with the right imagery.

Keen for his images to complement the written words James said: “I had to think of the images as a sequence down the page reading the images like a poem.”

Commenting on working with James, Marcus said: “With any form of collaboration you’ve got to be on the same wave length and we are politically very similar.

“What’s great about working with James is that he’s not precious and we would bounce ideas off each other and suggest improvements all the time.”

Awesome…Zap: An A-Z of History is available at Made in Stroud for £10.

One poem in the book is Suffering Suffragettes which James and Marcus have kindly allowed the SNJ to feature here:

Amazingly bold campaigners demand electoral franchise: going hungry in jail; kerosening letter-boxes; marching noisily; outrageous Pankhursts. Querulous, rebellious suffragettes teach us verities, when xamining yesteryear's zeitgeist.