A RENOWNED award-winning poet who has featured on national television adverts is heading to Bromsgrove Library as part of Bromsgrove Festival.

Jo Bell, one of a selection of poets chosen by Nationwide Building Society to narrate their TV ads, will be in town on Thursday, July 18 at 2pm.

The event is free and is organised in conjunction with the Library by WORDS, the group which for 40 years has been bringing the best of the spoken and written word to Bromsgrove.

For more information on WORDS, visit http://www.bromsgrovewords.com, or follow the group on Twitter @bromsgrovewords.

Jo will be reciting some of her work, including extracts from her Radio 4 docu-poem Slow Machine and, especially for the afternoon, some previously unheard new poems.

Jo lives on a narrowboat and writes about her life on boats – indeed, she was the first Canal Laureate - and her career as an archaeologist.

Her global workshop, the 52 project, brought hundreds of poets together to write in a ‘virtual village’.

A former director of National Poetry Day, Jo has also written best-selling how-to books, including How to Be a Poet and 52: Write a Poem A Week.