29th June, 18:30. The Portico Library, Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3HY.

Pamphlet launch: Lindsey Holland ‘The Lanterns’ with fellow Eyewear Aviator poets Paul Deaton, Ken Evans and Kimberly Campanello. Our compere for the evening is Andrew Forster. Entry on the door or online (details soon), £4, with a free glass of wine or soft drink.

LINDSEY HOLLAND was shortlisted for the 2015 Manchester Poetry Prize with a portfolio of poems from this pamphlet. She is co-editor of the online poetry magazine The Compass. Her poetry sequence Particle Soup appeared with KFS in 2012. She is a Hawthornden Fellow, founder of North West Poets, and literature professional. Her MA in Writing is from the University of Warwick and she lectures in poetry at Edge Hill University. The Lanterns is part of a larger project drawing on her family history.

Lindsey will read from ‘The Lanterns’, published by Eyewear as part of their 2016 Aviator Series. The launch will also feature readings from fellow Eyewear Aviator 2016 poets Paul Deaton, Ken Evans and Kimberly Campanello.

The Lanterns tells the story of John Jones, a nineteenth century mariner. These are poems of seafaring, desire and the conflicts between them. As Jones’s great-great-granddaughter, the poet resurrects him, blending the known facts of his life with richly imagined likelihoods in contemporary poems which explore universal themes. Jones’s voice is an insistent one, describing voyages through love and loss, nature and industry, the lived eternity of ocean and the ghosts of life at home with the woman he loves.

PAUL DEATON was runner-up in the 2010 Arvon International Poetry Competition. Poems regularly appear in The Spectator,
and in magazines: PN Review, The London Magazine, The Dark Horse Magazine, Gutter Magazine and anthologies: The Cockermouth Poets (2012), the The Echoing Gallery (ed. Rachael Boast, Redcliffe Poetry, 2013) and Ice (edited Meredith Collins, Pighog Press, 2012) as well on BBC Radio. He has almost completed his novel What I Wouldn’t Say: the first chapter was published by Freight in Tip Tap Flat. He has MLiTT in creative writing from Glasgow University.

KIMBERLY CAMPANELLO’s previous poetry publications include the pamphlet Spinning Cities (Wurm Press), her debut collection Consent (Doire Press) and the limited edition book Imagines (New Dublin Press). In 2015, The Dreadful Press published Strange Country, her collection on the sheela-na-gigs. MOTHERBABYHOME, a book of conceptual and visual poetry on the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway, will appear with zimZalla Avant Objects in September 2016. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University.

KEN EVANS poems have featured in Envoi, The Interpeter’s House, The Glasgow Review of Books, and The Morning Star, as well as on the ‘And Other Poems’ and ‘Clear Poetry’ websites. He’s been highly-commended in the Bridport and shortlisted in the Troubadour Competition. This is his debut pamphlet and features work from The Poetry School’s ‘Primers’/Nine Arches Press shortlisted first collection (2015), which was noted similarly, in Bare Fiction’s debutante competition the same year. His poetry MA is from Manchester University.