Held in the extraordinary environs of www.apiarystudios.org in Hackney, London, Pugilistica will bring together poets, academics, writers, artists and journalists to celebrate the sport of boxing through talks, readings, discussion and screenings. Featuring:

Fiction from Anna Whitwham, Poetry from Tim Atkins, Ulli Freer, Stephen Mooney, Art History from Sarah Victoria Turner and Journalism from Oliver Goldstein and Don McRae, who will present his new book ‘A Man’s World: the Double Life of Emile Griffith.’

The event will see the relaunch of Fights, by SJ Fowler, published by Veer Books in a revised second edition.

a literary celebration of boxing
Thursday July 28th 7pm ~ entrance free
Birkbeck Cinema Theatre, Birkbeck College 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

poetry book launch – SJ Fowler’s “Fights” cycles I-XV published by Veer books
“A dazzling, visceral, proficient, kinetic work. fights runs its combinations in formal excitement and trenchgut force.” Maggie O’Sullivan

Lynda Nead, Pevsner Chair Of History Of Art at Birkbeck college presents ‘Stilling the Punch’ a talk & presentation on boxing imagery

Kasia Boddy, author of Boxing:a Cultural History & Senior lecturer at UCL presents ‘Save the Public’s Soul by Punching Its Face’: Modernist Poetry and Pugilism

Tim Atkins celebrates the legendary heavyweight bout between Jack Johnson v. Arthur Cravan in the Monumental bullring, Barcelona, April 1916

Michael Zand reads “The Klitova-Klinchko Kuntador”

Patrick Coyle reads ‘The first painting i ever sold was of Muhammad Ali’.