Live literature night Verbose is back on Monday 25 April, featuring special guests plus the usual open mic of prose and poetry performances. Verbose, hailed in the press as one of the best spoken word nights in Manchester, each month invites three headliners who collaborate or share a common thread.

This month’s guests work or have worked at the University of Bolton, in the English & Creative Writing department. We’ll be hearing from Bolton tutors, past and present, Anne Caldwell, Simon Holloway and Evan Jones. We’ll also have a sneak preview of some of the work published in The Bolton Review, issue four of which is being officially launched on Wednesday 27 April.

Anne Caldwell was until recently a lecturer at the University of Bolton and is now Poet and Literature Programme Manager for The British Council. She was long-listed for the National Poetry Competition in 2015 and her latest collection, Painting The Spiral Staircase, has just come out on Cinnamon Press to critical acclaim. Simon Holloway is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Bolton and a novelist, short story writer and still occasionally a poet. His short fiction has been published in places such as Stand, New Contrast, New Writing and The North American Review. His latest novel is The Words We Use are Black and White. Canadian poet Evan Jones has published two collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, the most recent of which is Paralogues (2012). He has lived in Manchester since 2005 and teaches at the University of Bolton.

Another nine published and up-and-coming poets and prose writers will also perform.

Taking place on the fourth Monday of the month at Fallow café in Fallowfield (2a Landcross Road, M14 6NA), Verbose is free entry and doors are at 7.30pm. See http://verbosemcr.wordpress.com. For the open mic, email verbosemcr@gmail.com.