Poetry & knitting: an official trend!

Celebrate the Poetry Society's centenary, by helping to create the world's first giant knitted poem. Knitters everywhere are invited to knit a poem one letter at a time. The final poem, in all its knitted glory will be revealed at the end of the centenary year. Visit The Poetry Society for more information...

...and don't forget on Wednesday 8 July you can take part in an evenng of poetry and knitting courtesy of Poetica and Manchester Central Library. If knitting isn't your thing you are still very welcome. Poets include Oyeyinka Akintayo, Antonionioni, Tricia Ashworth, Irene Clare Garner, Peter Hartey, Alex Humphrey, David Keyworth, Paul Knight, Andy N, Stephanie Portersmith, Mark Mace Smith, Gaetana Tripetti and Michael Wilson.

Central Library Committee Room, Wednesday 8 July, 6-7.30 FREE

Knives, forks and spoons

Manchester has a new experimental poetry publisher, currently seeking manuscripts, they can be found here.

Amis tackles the subject of suicide

Leading author Martin Amis is to investigate the difficult subject of suicide with two public figures who have been touched by the tragedy at The University of Manchester this week (July 3).

Amis, who ends his second year as Professor of Creative Writing at The University of Manchester, subtitled his classic 1984 novel, Money, 'A suicide note' - a subject he has revisited in later novels.

He will be joined by 79-year-old poet Al Alvarez who is best known for his study of suicide, The Savage God, where he discussed the death of his friend Sylvia Plath.

Also taking part is British broadcaster and author Melvyn Bragg, whose first wife killed herself when she was 31 – ten years into their marriage.

Bragg did not realise his wife - a French vicomtesse called Lisa Roche - had a history of suicide attempts.

She went into therapy but killed herself in 1971 by jumping from a window.

"I could have done things which helped and I did things which harmed," he told The Guardian in 1998. "So yes, I feel guilt, I feel remorse."

The reading will be followed by a question and answer session.

Professor Amis is based at the University’s Centre for New Writing, which explores and researches collaboration between creative and critical writing.

Martin Amis Public Events: Literature and Suicide with Al Alvarez and Melvyn Bragg will take place at University Place, Oxford Road, Manchester at 6.30 PM.

Poem-films on BBC big screen

A selection of eight of the best poem-films commissioned by Comma Film are currently being shown on city centre Big Screens, as part of the BBC's national content. The films will show through the day on the even hour (10am, 12noon, 2pm, etc). The selected films are:
Heart Wrap (Shamshad Khan/Lisa Risbec), This Heart Disease Called Love (John Cooper Clarke/Gwendolen Osmond), Desires (Gaia Holmes/Kate Jessop), Archaeology (Gaia Holmes/Lisa Risbec), Working Metal (Kath McKay/Terry Wragg), Video Kid (Chris Woods/Charlotte Caetano), Streets (David Constantine/Sarah Eyre & James Fisher), and I Have Become a Stranger to My Own House (Helen Clare/Gwendolen Osmond).

For more information on the project and how to take part in our next film challenge, email ra.page@commapress.co.uk.

Hop over to Manchizzle for a great round up of new Manchester based blogs. Manchizzles's tasty ten include art, comics, playwriting, photo blogs and vodcasts.

The Return of Mark Gwynne Jones & the Psychicbread

Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread return to Studio Salford, King's Arms Salford on Sat 11th July.

Inspired… one of the most accomplished performance poets in the land… drawing the audience into a world where things are not quite what they seem. – The Guardian

Following their sell out show in January Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread return to Salford on Sat 11th July. From the girl who spent too long on a sunbed to the joys of driving a Sherman Tank at rush hour. . . this show uses humour, music and poetry as its messenger.

Mark formed Psychicbread in Manchester with film-maker Andy Lawrence. Since then the show has grown and Mark has teamed up with kora player Nick the Hat, pianist Deb Rose and percussionist John Thorne bringing together poetry, film and music into one live performance.

Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread are performing at Studio Salford, The King’s Arms, 11 Bloom Street, Salford, M3 6AN – on Sat 11th July, Doors 8pm Show 8.30pm - Admission £7 To reserve tickets call 0795 0000 761 / email busyplanet@mail.city.com

For free audio and films visit www.psychicbread.org
To read Mark’s recent interview with The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/urbanundiscovered/mark-gwynne-jones

Poetica and Knitting

A lovely way to spend an evening: knitting and listening to poetry. However, if knitting isn’t your thing, you’re still very welcome. Poets include Oyeyinka Akintayo, Antonionioni, Tricia Ashworth, Irene Clare Garner, Peter Hartey, Alex Humphrey, David Keyworth, Paul Knight, Andy N, Stephanie Portersmith, Mark Mace Smith, Gaetana Tripetti and Michael Wilson.

Central Library Committee Room, Wednesday 8 July, 6-7.30

Anishinaabe Poetry: Two Native American Poets

Presented as part of Not Part Of (2-18 July), the complementary ‘fringe’ to the Manchester International Festival, which celebrates our creative city.

Kimberly Blaeser teaches Creative Writing and Native American Literature at the University of Wisconsin. Of Anishinaabe ancestry and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, she is the editor of Stories Migrating Home: A Collection of Anishinaabe Prose and has three published collections.

Gordon Henry is Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University. His first novel, The Light People, won an American Book Award and his work has appeared in journals and anthologies in the US and Europe. He is an enrolled member of the White Earth Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota.

Central Library Committee Room, Thursday 2 July, 1-2

Andrew Losowsky & the Doorbells of Florence

Writer and photographer Andrew Losowsky captured the alluring and varied doorbells of Florence and then imagined the stories of those who might dwell within. Charming,
whimsical, and elegant, each story is a perfect match for its photo, balancing the old-world appeal of Florence and the contemporary, gritty realities of a modern city.

The book was born when Andrew posted photos of Florentine doorbells on the photo website Flickr.com, and filled in the captions with stories, inventing a whole
new genre that users of the site have dubbed flicktion. It went on to become a cult online hit, and to win the 2006 Lulu Blooker Prize for Fiction for books that began life on the internet.

Andrew Losowsky is an award-winning writer, editor and journalist whose stories have appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal and The Times. This is his first fiction book.

Manchester Central Library
Committee Room, Second Floor
Saturday 4 July 2pm
FREE

For more information please contact Libby Tempest on 0161 234 1981
email: l.tempest@manchester .gov.uk Get involved at http://manchesterlitlist.blogspot.com

The Lakes: poets, painters and fell walkers

Treasures at Central Library

Explore the library’s literary links to romantic Lakeland: from Wordsworth to Wainwright, including eighteenth century guidebooks, prints, sketches and Swallows and Amazons!

Central Library, throughout June and July FREE

Refugees, Memory and the Local

Refugees have been part of the British experience for centuries, but remain largely absent in the historical record and invisible more generally in the world of heritage and commemoration.

This talk explores the issue, with particular reference to the Manchester region. Tony Kushner is the author of Remembering Refugees: Then and Now (2006) and Anglo-Jewry since 1066 (2009), both published by Manchester University Press.

Thursday 25 June, 6pm
Central Library Committee Room
FREE

Winifred Nicholson: an illustrated talk by Christopher Andreae

We are delighted to welcome author Christopher Andreae, who will talk about his new book, Winifred Nicholson (Lund Humphries). In the 1920s Winifred, experimenting alongside her husband Ben Nicholson, emerged as a ground-breaking painter. This is the first book for many years on this important British artist.

She studied painting privately with her grandfather, George James Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle, a painter-friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, and then at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. Winifred first exhibited her watercolours at the Royal Academy, London, in 1914. In 1919 she visited India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma with her father, Charles Roberts, Under-Secretary of State for India, and acknowledged that this experience liberated her painting style and her palette.

In November 1920 she married Ben Nicholson in London. Having bought the Villa Capriccio, near Castagnola, Switzerland, in 1921, two years later she purchased Bankshead, a Cumbrian farmhouse built on Hadrian’s Wall, near to her ancestral home of Naworth Castle. Bankshead remained her base for the rest of her life.

Between 1921 and 1924 Nicholson and her husband painted landscapes and still-lifes in the winter in Switzerland and in the summer at Bankshead. In 1923 an exhibition of her work was held at Patterson’s Gallery, Bond St, London. During the early 1920s Nicholson became a Christian Scientist and concentrated in her painting on the metaphysical nature of the world. After the break-up of her marriage she went to Paris (1932–8), where she experimented with abstraction, and became a close friend of Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, César Domela, Jean Hélion and Hans Arp. From the 1950s to the 1970s she travelled to Greece, Morocco, France and the Scottish Islands on painting trips, seeking fresh experiences of colour and light.

Thursday 18 June, 6.30
Central Library Committee Room