Rothbury's Annual Magical Poetry and Music Event

Coquetdale Creatives, with What a Wonderful World, and Rothbury CAN, are delighted to invite you to an evening of music and poetry on the evening of June 25th, at Rothbury Golf Club. There are a limited number of tickets for sale, at £10/£5. You can get your tickets via this link.

James Tait
A Northumbrian-born pianist, singer-songwriter, and composer whose performances blend warmth, sophistication, and a gift for melody. Drawing inspiration from the landscapes and stories of rural Northumberland - his father hailed from Barrowburn farm, the namesake of Addie Harper's famous Barrowburn Reel- James infuses his music with both authenticity and versatility.

James is excellent at performing smooth, jazz-infected originals, heartfelt ballads, or flowing instrumental piano pieces. His live performances are marked by attention to detail, clarity of sound, and a relaxed, engaging presence.

Alongside his music, James also writes Northumbrian dialect poetry, celebrating the rhythms, humour and character of his home region.

He is the author of an original children's folk story that blends music and folklore to spark young imaginations. James Tait Music

10 year old Martha Darcy will join James to sing one of his most iconic songs.

Merrie Snell

Merrie Snell is an American-born writer, artist, and academic who has made her home in the wilds of Northumberland. More accurately, she lives in Morpeth which, in truth, sits on the cusp of those magnificent wilds, in a gentle spot between coast and crags.

Her fiction and poetry appear in numerous literary magazines and anthologies in the US and UK, including The Bridport Prize Anthology 2025, Anthropocene, New England Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, AGNI, Cimarron Review, among others. Her work has also been shortlisted for various awards and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

She holds an MFA from the prestigious University of Iowa Graduate Program in Creative Writing (a.k.a. The Iowa Writers' Workshop) and a PhD in music from Newcastle University. Her book, Lipsynching, on sound recording and the (dis)embodied voice was published by Bloomsbury Academic in their Study of Sound series.

Andrew Charleton

Andrew has been writing Northumbrian dialect poetry since 1984.

He says:
I learned a huge amount directly from the great Allan Wood. After adding music to one of his poems for the Upper Coquetdale film group film, John Barleycorn.

Since then I have won the Dialect poetry competition at Rothbury music festival 6 times, and also won the Northumbrian gathering at Morpeth.

I went on to become a judge at both competitions. My poems have featured on Jim Lloyds folk programme on radio two on two occasions. I have also had my words featured in the Northumberland National Park Visitor Centre promotional films.

I try to keep my verse within the traditional border metre, and I also like a bit of humour if possible.

My mantra is “dialect poetry should be said, not read” as the performance and delivery is equally as important as the words.

Phil Stuckey is an award winning songwriter having won Prog Rock album of the year in 2023 with Stuckfish (UK) and in 2025 with Another Realm (USA) He is the lead vocal in Stuckfish, and also in Wild Cloudberries.

Maddy's Crowd
For this event, Phil is joined with his sister and daughter. Be prepared for some awesome harmonies. Phil, Wendy, and Maddy are the front three for the contemporary folk band Wild Cloudberries. They write songs about everyday life with a focus on Northumbrian history and heritage.

Katrina Porteous

Katrina Porteous was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, to parents from North East England. She has lived in her grandparents' house on the Northumberland coast since 1987.

Katrina has published four poetry collections with Bloodaxe Books, most recently Rhizodont (2024) which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and won the Laurel Prize for environmental poetry.

Much of Katrina's work is rooted in the human life and nature of north Northumberland, particularly the fishing community. The scope of that work ranges from academic papers on the history of fishing, to dialect research, radio essays, and contributions to a wide range of local and national publications. In 1999 she accompanied Northumbrian poet Allan Wood and singer Graham Dick to the Cowboy Poetry Festival in Nevada USA, and the following year she supported cowboy poet Joel Nelson in his visits to Coquetdale schools.

Katrina Porteous is President of the Northumbrian Language Society, and writes poetry in dialect and standard English.