Spoken Label

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Latest up from Spoken Label (Spoken Word / Poetry Podcast) features the return of our friend, the amazing Krystal 'Gypsy' Orellano Weldon. Krystal “Gypsy” Orellano Weldon is a Tampa, Florida–based spoken word artist, poet, writer, and composition professor. As an educator, she teaches writing at the college level, where she is passionate about helping students find their voice, develop critical thinking skills, and use writing as a tool for self-expression and empowerment. Her work in the classroom reflects her broader mission to uplift diverse voices and create space for meaningful storytelling.Known throughout the Tampa Bay community for her presence in the open mic scene, Krystal has been featured in events such as Pinot & Poetry: A Toast to Herstory and began her artistic journey with the USF Poets. Her performances are rooted in authenticity, emotion, and cultural expression, resonating with a wide range of audiences.Her writing spans poetry and creative nonfiction, with publications in The Sandbox (St. Petersburg College’s newspaper), The Sandhill Review (Saint Leo University), and recognition as a runner-up in the University of Westminster’s 2017 Mental Health Poetry Competition.In addition to her academic and literary work, Krystal is currently in the process of producing a poetry album that blends spoken word with musical expression. She is also working on her upcoming novel, The Lover’s Passion Lounge, continuing to expand her voice across multiple creative platforms.

Latest up from Spoken Label (Poetry Podcast) features making her debut, the amazing Talin “Tally” Vartanian. Talin “Tally” Vartanian is a writer, actress, and photographer who resides somewhere in Los Angeles, CA. When she’s not struggling to keep her head above water, she loves to play video games, walk on hiking trails, and cook something new in her tiny kitchen. The Instagram feed, which we do an in-depth study on, can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/talinthepoet/

* Re-edited Podcast * Latest up from Spoken Label (Spoken Word / Poetry Podcast) features the return of our friend, Amanda Crundall. Amanda Crundall (a.k.a. “The Glam Poet”), is an accomplished and multi-faceted author, poet, spoken word performer, poetry workshop facilitator and radio presenter, at Beverley FM. She is based in East Yorkshire, UK.Her poetry, known for its raw emotion and honesty, explores vulnerability and resilience, resonating deeply with readers and audiences. She is unafraid to share own vulnerabilities, frailties and her darkest moments as well as her joys and loves. Amanda’s truth, humility, honesty and openness, connects profoundly with those who have encountered her work. Many find comfort, inspiration and empowerment in her writing - enabling them to feel understood, acknowledged and not so alone. Amanda has performed at various events and festivals: the Festival of Love, Doncaster; Scunthorpe Pride; No Limits Festival; and Ripon Poetry Festival. Her writing has featured in: The Script Magazine; the High Wolds Poetry Anthologies; the Dark Poet's Society; LiveWire Poetry and Online Anthologies. As the co-founder and former co-host of “Rabbiting On” spoken word/poetry group, she helped establish a thriving poetry community. Amanda has been delighted to see the group go from strength to strength, since passing over the baton with hosting duties. Amanda has published two poetry books. The most recent is “The Emboldened Heart” which is the primary focus of this Podcast.

Latest up from Spoken Label (Poetry / Spoken word Podcast) features the return of our friend, the amazing Aakriti Kuntal.Aakriti Kuntal is a poet, writer and multidisciplinary artist.She spends most of her time writing and reading, seeking refuge in nature. At other times, she explores photography, asemic writing, visual art and short experimental films. Her work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rasputin: A Poetry Thread,IceFloe Press, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Poetry at Sangam, among others. She is the author of the chapbook “God, am I your eyelid?” (Sigilist Press, USA) and the full length collection “Night breaks apart, like pomegranate seeds in my palm (The Indian List).Her accolades include the Reuel International Prize (2017); she was shortlisted for the RL Poetry Award (2018) and nominated for Best of the Net.

Latest up from Spoken Label (Spoken Word / Poetry Podcast) features the return of our friend, Amanda Crundall. Amanda Crundall (a.k.a. “The Glam Poet”), is an accomplished and multi-faceted author, poet, spoken word performer, poetry workshop facilitator and radio presenter, at Beverley FM. She is based in East Yorkshire, UK.Her poetry, known for its raw emotion and honesty, explores vulnerability and resilience, resonating deeply with readers and audiences. She is unafraid to share own vulnerabilities, frailties and her darkest moments as well as her joys and loves. Amanda’s truth, humility, honesty and openness, connects profoundly with those who have encountered her work. Many find comfort, inspiration and empowerment in her writing - enabling them to feel understood, acknowledged and not so alone. Amanda has performed at various events and festivals: the Festival of Love, Doncaster; Scunthorpe Pride; No Limits Festival; and Ripon Poetry Festival. Her writing has featured in: The Script Magazine; the High Wolds Poetry Anthologies; the Dark Poet's Society; LiveWire Poetry and Online Anthologies. As the co-founder and former co-host of “Rabbiting On” spoken word/poetry group, she helped establish a thriving poetry community. Amanda has been delighted to see the group go from strength to strength, since passing over the baton with hosting duties. Amanda has published two poetry books. The most recent is “The Emboldened Heart” which is the primary focus of this Podcast.

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Last up from Spoken Label (Our Spoken Word / Writer Podcast) features Part 2 of our extended chat with the Environmental Poetry collection ‘I am Nature’, this time an extended chat with the wonderful Andrew Sumner andPatricia (Pat) Sumner. Andrew Sumner grew up near Stroud in Gloucestershire,surrounded by deep woods and floriferous meadows thronged with butterflies. These places he explored with his mother, father and younger sister. Sadly, all that rich nature has since gone under the plough and the conifer. Later, his father’s work took the family south to Somerset and the new and differentlandscapes of the Somerset Levels, the Quantock Hills and the Mendip Hills. Andrew’s poems have been published in group anthologies and poetry collections, including ‘Travelling with the Saints’ (Y Lofa, 2013) and ‘Both Sides of the Border – An Anthology of Writing on the Welsh Border Region (Gwasg Carreg Gfwlach, 1998). He has illustrated a children’s book written by hiswife, Pat and enjoys walking, gardening, turning wood, drawing, painting, and researching family history. * Patricia Sumner (Pat) grew up on the Isle of Anglesey and nowlives in the Vale of Clwyd. She has loved creative writing ever since she was very young. As an adult, she studied under the poet and author Dr Gladys Mary Coles,namong other writers. It was at these Creative writing classes in Chester that she met her husband, Andrew. As a poet, she has had two collections published. Her pamphlet ‘Beyond the Glass’ came first in a national poetry competition run by Thynks Publications. Pat’s second collection of poems and readings, ‘The Promise of Dawn: Rites of Passage for all Beliefs’, is published by Veneficia Publications. Pat has won awards for some of her poems and plays, and her poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies. Pat has a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Philosophy, and a Post Graduate Certificate in Education. This book (which is recommended) can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/I-Am-Nature-Environmental-Poetry-ebook/dp/B0FH7PRW78/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1SAZ97SPX6WAQ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.boHw9Hvv-eiwk0u6a82ZqWgjmK5G_sB28inaUJj0xhnHDE2LARcrHr8SrLCATjQSwE33nT3rAzsmfAznxsyx5IGxWZdQS_e_hS0b6ZwycAw.ulpWQy3YfH1rRkpCS96xbDozvPLa_m20qWAIz00uIUc&dib_tag=se&keywords=andrew+sumner&qid=1771620249&s=books&sprefix=andrew+sumner%2Cstripbooks%2C591&sr=1-1

New from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Chat Podcast) an returning chat with Amanda Nicholson. Amanda Nicholson is the author of ‘Ghost of Me’ which was a finalist in the thriller category of The Author Elite Awards after its release in March 2020. It is now being re-released this February. She also runs the Substack page ‘I Am Not Calm’. Book will be available on all of the usual place.

Latest Podcast from Spoken Label (Author / ArtistPodcast) features making her debut, Lucy Beth. Lucy Beth (she/her/hers) is a multi-award-winningemerging performer, theatre-maker and lecturer from Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. ​​She graduated with Distinction from the University of Glasgow’s MLitt Theatre & Performance Practices Course after being awarded a PGT Excellent Scholarship bythe University. ​​Lucy has worked on various stage, screen, and audioprojects. Her recent credits include Blanca in Ten Feet Tall's production of "Guilty" by Rona Munro at Granite Noir Festival. Penny in “How To Train Your Dad To Be A Feminist” at the Aberdeen Arts Centre, and she has alsostarred in TMM Recruitment’s Christmas Advert, “Scary Tale of New Work,” ​Beyond conventional performing, part of Lucy's practiceconcerns dialect preservation. She speaks Doric and seeks to create and perform works in Doric as a means of continuing to render the dialect present. Her Doric works have reached critical acclaim and have earned Lucy several awards. ​Her Doric solo theatre show, “Ma Name Is Isabelle” wasperformed at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival and was highlighted as one of SNACK Magazine’s Picks of the Fringe. It also received an Edinburgh Fringe TheatreAward from the Fringe Theatre Awards. The show has received 5-star reviews in the press. ​ Lucy won the Best Newcomer Award at The Doric FilmFestival for her film, "Fit Wye Nae" in 2024. In 2025 she performed in "Sticky Business", winner of the Best Film Award at the 2025 Doric Film Festival. ​​Lucy’s Doric poetry won her a place in the finals of the Loud Poet's Slam Poetry Competition in Aberdeen in June 2025 and made a guest appearance at the LoudPoet’s Edinburgh Fringe show, which was awarded 5 stars. ​​She was one of the Young Women’s Movement’s 30 Under 30 Honourees for 2025. ​​Lucy was also a 2025 Scottish Emerging Theatre AwardsWinner. More details can be found at: https://www.lucy-beth-performer.com/

First of a two part Podcast today from Spoken Label (Spoken Word / Poetry Podcast) features discussing 'I am nature' an Environmental Poetry book with two of their poets, Leaf Pettit and Diana Sanders. Leaf Pettit lives in the vale of Clwyd with her husband and three children. Rural north ales has been her home since she was three years old and she has developed a deep connection with its landscape and environment, choosing to raise and home-educate her children. Leaf has been active in caring for local green spaces and has played a leading role in a community project to develop a green space at the heart of her village, including planting native hedging to forma wildlife corridor and wildflower areas. Leaf has a BA (Hons) in Literature Life and thought and imaginative writing and an MA in Creative Writing. Leaf's work has also appeared in the writer's wheel magazine and a couple of local publications, including the 'stillness' pamphlet produced from the Wellbeing Weekend at Saint Eidan Pilgrim Church in 2023. Diana Sanders is a composer and award winning poet. She is the composer of six published works for flute and has curated several events that combine music and poetry, some of which have been on podcasts and local radio. Her poetry publisjed has been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK, USA and India and her poem 'Birth' was third in the Welsh Poetry Competition in 2016. She has a BA from Nottingham Trent Creative University in Creative Arts (Music and Drama), In partnership with her friend, Pat Sumner, she runs a monthly writing group. She is the editor of the local Friends of the Earth magazine and is passionate about caring for the environment. More about this book can be read here: https://www.veneficiapublications.com/product-page/i-am-nature

Latest up from Spoken Label (Poetry Podcast) features the return of our friend Sarah James (also known as Sarah Leavesley ) talking about her new poetry book 'Darling Blue'. Darling Blue interweaves ekphrastic poems with a book-length fictional poetry narrative of love, lust and letting go. The poems inspired by Pre-Raphaelite artworks include QR codes, which readers can scan to view the pieces after or alongside their reading. Blue here is more than a colour or inspiration; it is desire, secrecy and sorrow – the essence of ‘feeling / really alive’, yet ‘distance’s illusion’. “A fascinating creative hybrid weaving ekphrasis and cohesive narrative, Darling Blue deftly balances its fictional speaker’s personal response to various Pre-Raphaelite artworks, with rich descriptive hints that resonate way beyond the mere visual. Exploring the complex tensions between the public sphere and private activities, this collection is a gallery tour of the narrator’s unfulfilling relationship with an unattainable partner, through to the ultimate redemption of self-worth and new love. James’s finely crafted and intelligently controlled poems brim with vivid imagery and lush sensory detail, reminding the reader ‘how brightly sunlight shines through // when freed from a cracked mirror’.” Sarah Doyle, Pre-Raphaelite Society Poet-in-Residence “James uses the lyric and ekphrasis to create a profound and moving collection on the cost of love; what endures and how we survive its wake. As vivid and emotive as its pre-Raphaelite sources, Darling Blue is also startlingly direct, eloquent and consoling on the things we find hardest to put into words. An unmissable collection.” Luke Kennard More details about said book can be found here; https://www.sarah-james.co.uk/?page_id=17191

Latest up from Spoken Label features making her debut, Suzy Aspell. Suzy is a Bedfordshire poet, living and writing in Luton. Curious about world cultures, she has worked in the travel industry for many years including repping in Spain and teaching ESL in Taiwan. Her poems are published in numerous anthologies, online and print magazines. Suzy also tutors GCSE English students struggling with ADHD and Dyslexia. She is passionate about art, politics and the planet and has a very pampered cat full of mischief and brio. Her debut book 'Webstrung' is now out. More details here: https://poeticedgepublishers.com/ OR https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1917408056?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_TTZ92CBDFTX850KXECZ5_1&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_TTZ92CBDFTX850KXECZ5_1&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_TTZ92CBDFTX850KXECZ5_1&bestFormat=true

Happy New Year all folks! Back with a bang, the first Spoken Label (Spoken Word Podcast) Podcast of the year features the Hongwei Bao. Hongwei Bao (he/him) is a Nottingham-based queer Chinese writer, translator and academic. He is part of the Fifth Word Playwrights, GOBS Spoken Word Collective and Nottingham Playhouse Writers’ Room. He is also a Middle Way Mentee for writing fiction and a New Earth Theatre theatremaker. His work explores queer desire, Asian identity, diasporic positionality and transcultural intimacy. Hongwei is the author of Dream of the Orchid Pavilion (poetry pamphlet, Big White Shed, 2024), The Passion of the Rabbit God (poetry collection, Valley Press, 2024) and Queering the Asian Diaspora (nonfiction, Sage, 2024). His short story ‘A Postcard from Berlin’ was a runner-up for the Plaza Prize for Microfiction in 2023. Hongwei has performed poetry at Bad Betty Live, City Arts Nottingham, Dandelions Poetry, DIY Poetry, ESEA Authors LitFest, ESA NE Newcastle, Five Leaves Bookshop, Fluent in Both, Lighthouse Bookshop Edinburgh, Kif Kif Antwerp, Nottingham Central Library, Nottingham Poetry Festival, Nottingham Playhouse, Notts Poetry, Nowhere Netherlands, Paper Crane Poetry, Prague Pride, Shaded Writers, Speech Therapy, and The Common Press London. Instagram: @patrickbao123 Bluesky: @queercomrades Self-Portrait as a Banana can be purchased from here - https://amzn.eu/d/0GOtbOo

Latest up from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Podcast) features Dr Jack Hunter.Dr Jack Hunter is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of consciousness, religion, ecology and the paranormal. He is an Hon-orary Research Fellow with the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and a tu-tor at the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, Uni-versity of Wales Trinity Saint David. He teaches on the MA in Ecol-ogy and Spirituality and the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrol-ogy. He is also a tutor for the Alef Trust on their MSc in Conscious-ness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology, where he teaches on the ‘Approaches to Consciousness’ module, and teaches ‘The Va-rieties of Anomalous Experience’ for the California Institute for Hu-man Science. He is the author of Manifesting Spirits (2020), Spirits, Gods and Magic (2020), Ecology and Spirituality (2023), and The Folklore of the Tanat Valley (2025). He is the editor of Deep Weird (2023), Greening the Paranormal (2019) and Damned Facts (2016), and co-editor of Talking With the Spirits (2014), Mattering the Invis-ible (2021), Folklore, People and Place (2023) and Sacred Geogra-phy (2024). He lives in the hills of Mid-Wales with his family.

Latest up from Spoken Label (Author / Artist Podcast) features the return of our friend with Part 2 of an extended chat, tea buff, weird fiction aficionado and abstracted songwriter, Eric Loveland Heath, professionally known as E.L. Heath. In this return on Spoken Label, we review Eric's releases on Plenty Wenlock Records in 2025 and also the venture of his label into more publishing as well as discuss what is next for this label. Some links include: https://www.facebook.com/ELHeathuk/ https://plentywenlockrecords.bandcamp.com/ https://x.com/PlentyWenlock https://www.instagram.com/plentywenlock/ https://plentywenlockrecords.bigcartel.com/ https://bsky.app/profile/plentywenlock.bsky.social

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Elder goth/swamp hag in Kitchener. Aurora finalist. Brave New Weird winner. Work in Augur, The Deadlands, On Spec, Prairie Fire, ALOCASIA, Nighmare, Feminist Studies Journal, Arc Poetry, & more. Neurospicy, antifascist, Indigiqueer, disabled. Raised on the land & off the grid. Ex JW-kid/army brat. Retired dancer, industrial DJ, & model. Addicted to learning—may be turning into a witch.

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