Storm and Golden Sky: Natasha Borton and John Redmond

Friday 25th September, 7 PM start, £5. Up the stairs (at the back of the bar room) at the Caledonia pub, Catharine Street, in the Georgian Quarter, Liverpool.

Natasha Borton is Welsh writer. She is part of Voicebox Collective in Wrexham, North Wales and Talking Doorsteps, the international collective with Roundhouse and British Arts Council. She has been published in Litmus, Erbacce, For Books Sake and threeandahalfpointnine. Natasha performs regularly in North Wales and the North West including the Bluecoat, Everyman and Playhouse and The Lowry. Natasha was runner up for the Erbacce prize and her chapbook Signed Asbestos will be coming out late 2015.

John Redmond was born in Dublin in 1967. After completing a D. Phil on the subject of contemporary poetry at Oxford, he taught for two years at Macalester College in Minnesota. Currently he is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool. MUDe and Thumb’s Width are published by Carcanet. He reviews poetry widely and was associated with the poetry magazine, Thumbscrew. He has published a textbook How to Write a Poem (Oxford: Blackwell) and was the editor of James Liddy: Selected Poems (Dublin: Arlen House). His critical book Poetry and Privacy: Questioning Public Interpretations of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry has just been published by Seren.

Chris Pusateri: a preview

Chris Pusateri will read at the next Other Room on Wednesday 7th October at The Castle Hotel, Oldham Street, Manchester, M2 4PD. 7 PM start, free entry. The other readers will be Robert Hampson, Alistair Noon and Michelle Naka Pierce. Read more about Chris here.

Dagestan: SJ Fowler

Dagestan is a place we go to fight for money. A place where we are paid to be filmed, and perhaps be killed.

Dagestan is an thrilling new play by poet and martial artist SJ Fowler, set in the shadowy world of global security. Enter the minds of military contractors to uncover a culture of violence, gallows humour and moral uncertainty.

Fri 16 October – Sat 17 October at the Rich Mix, London.

Produced by Penned in the Margins

Knives Forks and Spoons poets illuminated in Blackpool

The theme for this year’s National Poetry Day (8th October) is ‘light’ and this autumn the Knives Forks and Spoons Press will be displaying a poetry anthology in lights as part of the Blackpool Illuminations. The work of 11 poets will be exhibited on 21 lights, which will be seen by more than three million visitors – ensuring that this will be the most widely read anthology of 2015.

The poems will be on display from the 4th September to the 15th November 2015, and will be installed on Blackpool’s famous cliff section at the North Shore. This project was made possible by funding from Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts programme.

Alec Newman, from Knives Forks and Spoons, said: “this is a tremendously exciting project, because it will bring a new and exceptionally large audience to poetry, and give that audience the opportunity to engage with the work of some of the most exciting experimental poets working today.”

The 11 poets participating in this anthology in lights are: Leanne Bridgewater, Fiona Cameron, Finella and Philip Davenport, Kate Duckney, Ann Mathews, Pansy Maurer-Alvarez, Nicky Mesch, Yvonne Reddick, Rachel Sills, and Juliet Troy. 

More HERE

Our next 4 events

Put em on yr calendar!

Future Events

7th October 2015 7.00 @ The Castle, Oldham Street, Manchester – Alistair Noon, Chris Pusateri, Michelle Naka Pierce, Robert Hampson

9th December 2015 7.00 @ The Castle, Oldham Street, Manchester – Out of Everywhere 2, an anthology of women poets launch

17th February 2016 7.00 @ The Castle, Oldham Street, Manchester – Mark Leahy, Will Montgomery and TBA

13th April 2016 7.00 @ The Castle, Oldham Street, Manchester – The Other Room 8th birthday, readers TBA

Bad Language

26 August, 7 PM. The Castle Hotel, 66 Oldham Street, M4 1LE, Manchester. Headliner: Other Room organiser and if p then q poet Tom Jenks with Ros Ballinger, Robert Stevenson, Gareth Taylor, Naomi Scott, Polly Checkland Harding, Lauren Hickin, Alex Webb, Stephen Curtis, George James, Dave Hartley.