MURMUR #3
Reading Series

Sunday 8th April / 7pm / Free
Common, Manchester

Featuring…
Sophie Jung
Lila Matsumoto
Bryony Bates
Edwin Stevens

+ Aldous RH/Secret Admirer DJs

Readers:

SOPHIE JUNG – Sophie Jung (b. 1982 Luxembourg) is a performance artist based in London and Basel. She was educated at Amterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Goldsmiths College.Her writing has been published at Fiktion.cc, HOTEL and The White Review (forthcoming). In 2016, she won the Swiss Art Award.
Selected solo exhibitions include: ‘It’s Not What It Looks Like’ at Sophie Tappeiner, Vienna (2017); ‘Producing my Credentials’ at Kunstraum, London (2017); ‘Death Warmed Up’ at Liste Performance Project, Basel (2017).

Frieze says: “[Sophie Jung] has perfected a tone that constantly veers between jokey and serious, aloof and ever-present, creating an unsteady experience of listening and viewing that somehow feels incredibly intimate. Whether she speaks about politics or animal life, whether she talks about the probable or the fantastic, you want to believe what Jung says.”

LILA MATSUMOTO was born in Japan, grew up in the US and currently teaches poetry at the University of Nottingham. Lila co-runs Front Horse, a magazine and performance night of poetry, music, and art, and convenes the Nottingham Poetry Exchange. Urn and Drum, her first poetry collection, is published by Shearsman Books in 2018.

Rachael Allen says: “The world within Urn & Drum is a cornucopia of shapes, colours, and objects, fashioned almost as a gleeful, surreal picture-book; a playful naivety that leads to serious questions of what it means to exist and feel in the world. Through linguistic dexterity and play, [these poems] exclaim heartbreak and test the limits of language in a single line.”

BRYONY BATES is a writer and performer based in Manchester. Her work has been published in Adjacent Pineapple, Ladybeard Magazine and Spoke: A New Queer Anthology from Dog Horn Press. Her debut solo pamphlet, States, was published by Enjoy Your Homes Press in 2017. As a performer, her theatrical credits with Contact Young Company include There Is A Light: Brightlight, 15 Minutes, and She Bangs the Drums.

Zarf Magazine says: “It feels like […] bleakly hard work.”
Bryony Bates says: “Angry sex poetry and flippant bullshit.”

EDWIN STEVENS is from Llanfairfechan, North Wales but now he lives in Glasgow, Scotland. He writes songs and stories. www.liveslowdeath.com

Jessica Higgins says: “I’ve seen this man tattoo his own chest and spill his spirit wildly across a room and no that’s not a euphemism.”