Please join us on Saturday 27 April 2024, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.
You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Performers often bring along books and CDs to sell, please note we are only able to accept cash payments.
Read about the poets and musicians below:
Peter Sansom
Photograph credit: Steve Dearden
Peter Sansom’s Carcanet books include a Selected Poems and more recently Lanyard (‘It is kind. It is strong. It is beautiful’ — MIR). Bloodaxe publish the best-selling Writing Poems. He is co-director with the poet Ann Sansom of The Poetry Business in Sheffield, where they run courses and edit The North magazine and Smith|Doorstop Books. Peter has been company poet with M&S and the Prudential, and Fellow in Poetry at both Leeds and Manchester Universities.
“In my view, the UK’s most astute and effective tutor, a guiding light through his deft criticism and the example of his own work. Peter Sansom is Mr Poetry.” –Simon Armitage.
Carrie Etter
American expatriate Carrie Etter’s fifth collection of poetry, Grief’s Alphabet, is published by Seren in April. Her poems have appeared in The Guardian, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, and The Times Literary Supplement, among many other journals and anthologies internationally. She also writes short stories, essays, and reviews. In 2022 she joined the creative writing faculty at the University of Bristol.
Anita Pati
Anita Pati was born and raised in an English northern coastal town and currently lives in London. Hiding to Nothing, her debut poetry collection, was published in April 2022 by Pavilion Poetry and was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize, with work highly commended in the Forward Prize. Her first poetry pamphlet, Dodo Provocateur, won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition (2019)and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Awards. Anita has worked at various points in journalism and libraries.
Arian Sadr
Arian Sadr is an international Artist and a percussionist. Arian started learning Tonbak (Persian goblet drum) and Daf (a circular frame drum) when he was seven. He moved to England from his home country Iran to study in music and music production in 2003. During this time, he became interested in many styles of music that influenced him to create his own original fusion style. He performs solo and for leading bands.
Arian’s performances include with collaboration on The Wind Project with Opera North Leeds, Arian has also performed with musicians from the BBC Philharmonic for BBC Music Day (live on BBC Radio 3 in 2015). Manchester Imperial War Museum as Part of Asia Triennial, and also a collaboration with Royal Northern College Of Music Manchester.
Arian currently teaches Persian drumming skills through workshops, one-to-one, and increasingly through schools and community groups. His focus is Persian percussion instruments. He has hosted many dynamic educational drumming workshops including ‘Drum and Paint’, the combination of experimental music and art, giving an opportunity to the audiences to experience and absorb the process of creation and improvisation.
We are pleased to host a workshop with poet and publisher Peter Sansom on the morning of Saturday 27 April 2024, 11.00-1.00 at the Friends Meeting House, Manchester. Directions to the venue are on the Friends Meeting House website.
The fee is £20. Please email davidborrott@btinternet.com to confirm a place. Once your place has been confirmed payment can be made by cheque or by using the PayPal button below:
Workshop Payment £20
Peter Sansom
Photograph credit: Steve Dearden
Peter Sansom’s Carcanet books include a Selected Poems and more recently Lanyard (‘It is kind. It is strong. It is beautiful’ — MIR). Bloodaxe publish the best-selling Writing Poems. He is co-director with the poet Ann Sansom of The Poetry Business in Sheffield, where they run courses and edit The North magazine and Smith|Doorstop Books. Peter has been company poet with M&S and the Prudential, and Fellow in Poetry at both Leeds and Manchester Universities.
“In my view, the UK’s most astute and effective tutor, a guiding light through his deft criticism and the example of his own work. Peter Sansom is Mr Poetry.” –Simon Armitage.
Please join us on Saturday 23 March 2024, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.
You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Performers often bring along books and CDs to sell, please note we are only able to accept cash payments.
Read about the poets and musicians below:
Mary Jean Chan
Photo Credit: Adrian Pope
Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for multiple prizes, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. Bright Fear, Chan’s second book,was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is currently shortlisted for the 2024 Writers’ Prize. In 2022, Chan co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems with Andrew McMillan. Chan is currently the 2023-24 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Rachael Allen
Rachael Allen is the author of Kingdomland and God Complex, both published by Faber. She works as an editor and lecturer.
Katie O’Pray
Katie O’Pray is currently a creative facilitator and Barbican Young Poet. They have been the winner of The ruth weiss Foundation’s Emerging Poet’s Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. Their work has also been associated with the Manchester Writing Competition and the Magma Poetry Competition, among others. Their debut collection ‘APRICOT’ was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2022.
Christopher Godhard
Chris Godhard is a classical guitarist based in Manchester. He has recently completed his Bachelor’s degree at the Royal Northern College of Music and is continuing his studies with a Master’s degree under the tutelage of world renowned guitarist, Craig Ogden.
In September 2022, Chris won two special prizes in the Youth of Music International Competition and was awarded the opportunity to record in the Electrecord Studio in Bucharest and a solo recital opportunity at the Arcus Cultural Centre. Chris has also been awarded the Ian Spencer Fox Guitar Bursary and support from the Waverly Fund and Help Musicians to aid him throughout his studies. In October 2022, Chris performed Sally Beamish’s Unquiet in a concert dedicated to showcasing her works and was highly commended by the composer for his performance.
Chris has given solo performances in prestigious venues in Manchester such as the Bridgewater Hall, the Stoller Hall, and the Lord Mayor’s Suite in the Manchester Library. As well as performing as a soloist, Chris has played extensively in a range of ensembles such as a guitar and violin duo, a guitar and voice duo, symphony orchestras and jazz bands.
Chris Godhard appears by kind permission of the RNCM.
We are pleased to host a workshop with Bloodaxe poet Yvonne Reddick on the morning of Saturday 25 November 2023, 10.30-12.30 at the Friends Meeting House, Manchester. Directions to the venue are on the Friends Meeting House website. The workshop will focus upon:
Ecopoetry and Activism
Join Yvonne Reddick for a morning of reading, writing and exploring poetry of environmental activism. We’ll discuss poetry and dissent, and write our own poems in celebration and defence of the environments we care about. From Ted Hughes donating a poem to Rhino Rescue, and Seamus Heaney selling bog-poems to raise funds for bog conservation, to Pascale Petit’s publishing a poem with Extinction Rebellion, environmentally-minded poets have long been a part of activist movements. We’ll explore Karen McCarthy Woolf’s idea of ‘activism of the heart’, discuss what a poem can do, and put pen to paper!
The fee is £20. Please email davidborrott@btinternet.com to confirm a place. Once your place has been confirmed payment can be made by cheque or by using the PayPal button below:
Workshop Payment £20
Yvonne Reddick
Photo credit: Alastair Levy
Yvonne Reddick is an award-winning writer, editor, ecopoetry scholar, and climber. She has received a Leadership Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Poetry Society’s inaugural Peggy Poole Award, a Northern Writer’s Award and a Creative Futures Literary Award. Her work has appeared in The Guardian Review, Poetry Review and the New Statesman, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC North West Tonight. Her first book-length collection, Burning Season, is published by Bloodaxe in 2023 and won the Laurel Prize for Best UK First Collection of Ecopoetry. Its title poem was a prizewinner in the Gingko Prize for Ecopoetry 2023. Her other publications include Ted Hughes: Environmentalist and Ecopoet and Anthropocene Poetry.
Please join us on Saturday 25 November 2023, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.
You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Performers often bring along books and CDs to sell, please note we are only able to accept cash payments.
Read about the poets and musicians below:
Nick Laird
Nick Laird was born inCounty Tyrone in 1975and is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Poetry at Queens’ University, Belfast. A poet, novelist, screenwriter, critic and former lawyer, his awards include the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. For many years he taught at universities in America including Columbia, Princeton and NYU. His poem, Up Late, was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2022, and a collection of the same name was published by Faber& Faber in June 2023.
Jacqueline Saphra
Jacqueline is a poet, playwright and activist. She is the author of nine plays, five chapbooks and five poetry collections. The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye 2011) was nominated for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, All My Mad Mothers (2017) shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot prize and Dad, Remember You are Dead (2019), both from Nine Arches Press. Two chapbooks, A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (2017) and Veritas: Poems after Artemisia (2020) were published by Hercules Editions. Her chapbook from The Emma Press, If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women, illustrated by Mark Andrew Webber and set to music by Benjamin Tassie won the Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work, and her newest play, The Noises was nominated for a Standing Ovation Award. Jacqueline’s collection, One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets (2021) was followed by Velvel’s Violin in July 2023 (Nine Arches Press), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet and teaches and mentors for The Poetry School.
Naush Sabah
Photo credit: Gerry Cambridge
Naush Sabah is a writer, editor, critic, and educator based in the West Midlands. In 2019, she co-founded Poetry Birmingham Literary Journalwhere she is currently Editor and Publishing Director. The journal is a quarterly periodical of contemporary poetry and poetry criticism, described by the TLS as ‘intellectually lithe and provocative’ with a ‘dynamic and incisive critical section’. Naush also co-founded Pallina Press where she is Editor-at-Large and she currently serves as a trustee at Poetry London. Her writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, the TLS, PN Review, The Dark Horse, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere. A limited-edition double micro-pamphlet box set Heredity/ASTYNOME was published by Broken Sleep Books imprint Legitimate Snack in June 2020. She was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s 2021 Sky Arts Writers Award. Her debut pamphlet Litanies was published by Guillemot Press in November 2021 and shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award in 2022. It has been reviewed in The Guardian as having ‘something of Thomas Hardy’s bittersweet dialogue with the divine,’ and in The Irish Times as, ‘an exciting and auspicious set of poems’. She is a visiting lecturer in creative writing at Birmingham City University.
Li Lu
Originally from China, cellist Li Lu has performed across Asia and Europe. She was featured in a Sky Arts documentary Art of Survival (2011), reaching a vast audience in the UK and internationally. Following this experience she recorded one of her major solo albums In Love with Bach – the complete Bach Cello Suites. Li Lu enjoys collaborating with musicians and artists of all kinds and has been a recipient of several awards from Arts Council England, BBC Performing Arts Fund and the Irish Arts Council.
In addition to her exciting performing career, Li Lu has been teaching at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester since 2010, where she enjoys dedicating her time to talented young musicians
Please join us on Saturday 28 October 2023, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.
You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Read about the poets and musicians below:
Alicia Stubbersfield
‘Enigma Machine’ is Alicia Stubbersfield’s fifth collection, described by Dean Parkin as ‘full of cracking details, honest observations and wry humour’. From the North-West, she was an English teacher for many years, taking her students to the Arvon Foundation at Lumb Bank where she found her own poetic voice. She now regularly tutors for Arvon and was Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. A sessional lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire she still loves teaching.
William Letford
William Letford has three collections of poetry published by Carcanet Press. His work has been adapted into film, projected onto buildings, carved into monuments, adapted for the stage, cast out over the radio, and performed by orchestras. He has helped restore a medieval village in the mountains of Northern Italy, taught English in Japan, and been invited to perform in Iraq, South Korea, Lebanon, Australia, Germany, India, Poland, and many more countries.
Yvonne Reddick
Photo credit: Alastair Levy
Yvonne Reddick is an award-winning writer, editor, ecopoetry scholar, and climber. She has received a Leadership Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Poetry Society’s inaugural Peggy Poole Award, a Northern Writer’s Award and a Creative Futures Literary Award. Her work has appeared in The Guardian Review, Poetry Review and the New Statesman, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC North West Tonight. Her first book-length collection, Burning Season, is published by Bloodaxe in 2023 and won the Laurel Prize for Best UK First Collection of Ecopoetry. Its title poem was a prizewinner in the Gingko Prize for Ecopoetry 2023. Her other publications include Ted Hughes: Environmentalist and Ecopoet and Anthropocene Poetry.
Becky Langan
Photo credit: Colin Cunningham
Becky Langan is a percussive fingerstyle guitarist who employs a combination of techniques that explore the outermost reaches of the acoustic guitar.
In 2016, Becky was a semi-finalist on Sky Arts Guitar Star (Series 2) – a TV show which scoured the UK to discover a world class instrumental guitarist .
Please join us on Saturday 23 September 2023, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.
You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Read about the poets and musicians below:
Denise Riley
A natal error.
Steadied by pamphlets
and brilliance of the babies.
In leaping joy alone.
Why do some will themselves to stone.
Now is it time for night to fall.
Fred D’Aguiar
Fred D’Aguiar was born in London of Guyanese parents, and grew up in Guyana before returning to London for his secondary and tertiary education. He has lived in the US since the mid-90s and currently he is Professor of English at UCLA. He trained as a psychiatric nurse before reading African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He was Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Cambridge University and has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. For the Unnamed (2023) is Fred D’Aguiar’s fifth collection with Carcanet. His previous poetry book, Letters to America was a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice in 2020. Carcanet also published his nonfiction, Year of Plagues (2021).
For the Unnamed was originally entitled ‘For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico’s Sarco and Sepulveda’s Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852′. That title provided the full narrative in a nutshell: we know the names of the owners of the two horses, we know the horses’ names, the place and date of the race. But apart from his colour, and his victory, we know nothing about the jockey who made the whole thing happen.
Fred D’Aguiar’s new book recovers and re-imagines his story. It was the most publicised race of its era with numerous press notices but he remained unnamed. We are given several perspectives on the action – owner’s, trainer’s, the horse Black Swan’s, the jockey’s lover, the jockey himself. But one crucial element of identity is forgotten, and that forgetfulness speaks eloquently about the time and the freed man’s circumstances in the mid-nineteenth century.
Fred D’Aguiar’s previous collection, Letters to America (2020), was a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice and a White Review Book of the Year.
Sarala Estruch
Photo credit: Alan Howard
Sarala Estruch is a British writer, poet, and researcher. Her debut full collection After All We Have Travelled (Nine Arches Press, January 2023) was a Poetry Book Society Spring 2023 Recommendation and was described as ‘an intelligent book, provocative and pulsing’ in The Poetry Review. Her pamphlet Say (flipped eye, 2021) was a Poetry School Book of The Year. A fellow of the Ledbury Poetry Critics programme, her poetry, creative non-fiction, and reviews have been widely published in outlets including The Poetry Review, Wasafiri,and The Guardian, and featured on BBC Radio. Sarala is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Liverpool, where she is a recipient of the JIC Davies Studentship. She lives in London.
Prolific UK-based pianist & composer Simeon Walker has quickly emerged as a leading light in the burgeoning Modern Classical scene, regularly performing and touring across the UK and Europe. He has supported a variety of artists including Neil Cowley, LYR, Submotion Orchestra, S. Carey, Loscil, Erland Cooper & Niklas Paschburg, and performed notable live sets at Latitude & Timber Festivals.
His music is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3, BBC 6Music, Classic FM, Scala Radio, KEXP & Soho Radio, with his music receiving listening figures in excess of 30 million streams across platforms, and a recent release, ‘Reverie’, featuring on the first o!cial Piano Day compilation by the LEITER label, alongside Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds and Chilly Gonzales. He also founded and continues to curate Brudenell Piano Sessions: an intimate and varied live music series highlighting the diverse music being composed and performed on the piano, hosted at Leeds’ iconic Brudenell Social Club.
Simeon’s recent work represents a return to the introspective piano-based instrumentals that first thrust him into the limelight. His new EP series ‘Imprints’ features a set of piano miniatures representing everyday fleeting moments; brief snapshots in time, centred on conveying the emotions and feelings experienced during the lockdowns of recent years, whilst highlighting the desire to be outside and out in the open.
His music and live performances reflect the extremes of human experience – gentle, calm and still at times; powerful, boisterous and flowing at others, with the aim of breaking down the barrier between performer and audience, creating the opportunity for real, genuine connection through music, not just through idle, passive listening, but in meaningful, engaged participation. Listeners are invited to find stillness, beauty and meaning as much in the spaces between the notes as the notes themselves, as musical stories are woven with each passionate, intimate performance.
We are delighted to publish the three winning winning poems from our 2023 competition judged by Philip Gross.
First Prize: Laura Theis (poem and video below)
Joint Second: Sara-Jane Arbury (poem and video below)
Joint Second: Steve Pottinger (poem and video below)
Also, many congratulations to the five poets whose poems Philip Gross has singled out for commendation (in alphabetical order):
Ken Evans
Naoise Gale
Vlad Pasca
Thea Smiley
Christian Ward
The Winners
Laura Theis (1st Prize)
in my mother tongue the name for grand piano is wing
in my mother tongue
words can be feathered
which turns them into
old jokes or proverbs
owning a bird
in my mother tongue
is sign of great madness:
you can accuse someone
with an outrageous opinion
of cheeping and chirping
if you want to convey
that you are flabbergasted or awed
in my mother tongue
you might say: my dear swan
which is what I think
when I first hear you play
as your fingers move over
the keys I wonder
what gets lost
in translation
between music
and birdsong
whether both soar above
our need to shift between words
then I remember
in my mother tongue
the name for grand piano
is wing
What judge Philip Gross said about the poem:
‘in my mother tongue the name for grand piano is wing’
Among several differently compelling poems, this one came through as a winner for its bold but subtle simplicity. Its small stanzas shorn of punctuation read like an agreement to walk naked in the hinterland simultaneously between spoken languages, between words and music, between the speaker’s past and present, between the familiar and the strange. This is a poem that both loves and relishes language, and points beyond it, letting the visible silence of its white space speak.
Writing in her second language, Laura Theis received a Distinction from Oxford University’s MSt in Creative Writing. Her work appears in venues such as Poetry, Mslexia, Magma, Rattle, and Strange Horizons, and anthologies by Candlestick Press, Broken Sleep Books, Pan Macmillan, and Aesthetica, amongst many others. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut ‘how to extricate yourself’, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. She was the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Arthur Welton Award, the AM Heath Prize, EAL Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, Mogford Prize, Hammond House International Literary Award, and a Forward Prize nomination.
A runner-up for the Mairtin Crawford Award, she was shortlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize, the Bridport Prize, the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize, the Hippocrates Prize, the Alpine Fellowship, and a finalist for numerous other literary awards including the National Poetry Competition and the BBC Short Story Award. Her forthcoming book ‘A Spotter’s Guide for Invisible Things’ has won the 2022 Live Canon Collection Prize.
She lives in Oxford with her partner (a neuroscientist) and her dog (a lunatic).
Sara-Jane Arbury (Joint 2nd Prize)
Octopus
Gobbet of God’s phlegm made flesh,
O oktō, O pous, globular mind-boggle
sucker-punching the concept of curious.
You’re crawling stone, you’re passing cloud,
you’re spiky coral reef. You’re a gobstopper.
Ocean’s soft vowel, locomoting with jet
propulsion, trailing streamers of arms.
Or are you the nearest myth to a gorgon?
You fondle rocks like endless lovers, press
bulbous mass down the ossified mouths
of holes. Taste what you touch.
O, moans Hokusai’s fisherman’s wife,
with a throat full of tentacle, and you
suctioned to the sweet salt of her. O,
boneless lover, erotic comet, you’re
too overwhelming for this world.
An alien equation maybe, with your nine
brains, eight arms, three hearts, blue blood –
No? OK, then squeeze through the chink in science,
octopod. Slop into another aquarium. Writhe
amongst yourself. Write mesmerism.
Or simply unscrew the lid off intelligence,
belief-beggar, and shake this little globe.
We are snow drowning around you. Ogle us.
What judge Philip Gross said about the poem:
‘Octopus’
This is a glorious brain teaser of a poem, both witty and serious, grounded in up-to-the-minute scientific knowledge and alert to the gaps in human understanding. Mimicking its subject, it reaches in many directions at the same time, with an exuberant delight in exploring the whole register, from the uncanny to the erotic, always keeping one step ahead of the reader. This is word and image pushing itself to the limits of the intelligence on which we pride ourselves, just to find the octopus (is it watching us?) still its unknowable self, just out of reach.
Sara-Jane Arbury is a writer, poet, performer and tutor. She has collaborated with many organisations including Oxford University Press, the National Literacy Trust, Ledbury Poetry Festival and Writing West Midlands, and is a former Director of the Voices Off programme at Cheltenham Literature Festival. Sara-Jane was a finalist in the 2021 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition and longlisted for The Plough International Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in anthologies, most recently Tools Of The Trade: Poems For New Doctors published by The Scottish Poetry Library. Sara-Jane is Writer-in-Residence for Herefordshire’s site-specific theatre company Feral Productions.
Steve Pottinger (Joint 2nd Prize)
7.19 in the evening, and the boy outside
New Street station is singing
a lament for us all, he sings
for the puffa jacket kids clothed
and camouflaged in swagger, he sings
for the electric bike takeaway riders
who criss-cross the city, silent
and determined, their two-wheel
spinning gig economy, he sings
for the husk of a lad who totters
tram tracks like a ballerina, trailing
a sleeping bag, who is going nowhere
good in his own slow time and is lost
to us, he sings
for the young couples, still
in love, touching hands
and clasping ready meals
heading back to city apartments
to share each other’s dreams, he sings
for football fans and figures folded
in the shadow of doorways, he sings
for shift workers, their aching backs
their fallen arches, he sings
for the quiet conversation of women
on their way to clean offices, he sings
for the is this isn’t this
flirtation of friends, he sings
for our mistakes, our wrong turnings
our missed opportunities, the bright future
that slipped through our fingers, the better
world that disappeared, he sings
and his voice, pure and soft, a gift
spirals out to join satellites and stars
seeking nothing but the joy of its being
an offering to god, if god is listening
and I think, we should all be crying
here, we should all of us be crying
it is 7.19 in the evening and
the boy outside New Street station sings.
What judge Philip Gross said about the poem:
‘7.19 in the evening, and the boy outside’
Sometimes a poem seems to take a deep breath and unfurl from stanza by stanza by the sheer momentum of its vision. Without a full stop in sight, it flows rippling over its commas and finely judged line breaks, through shifts and modulations but with no loss of momentum, right up to the humbling climax of its ending. This is a state of the nation address with no pomposity, teetering on the edge of metaphysics, all the stronger for its grounding in the utterly mundane.
Steve Pottinger is a founding member of Wolverhampton arts collective Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists. He’s an engaging and accomplished performer who has performed the length and breadth of the country, and his work regularly appears online in CultureMatters and the Morning Star. His sixth volume of poems, ‘thirty-one small acts of love and resistance’ published by Ignite Books, is out now. His website is at https://stevepottinger.co.uk/
Judge: Philip Gross
Photo credit: Stephen Morris
Philip Gross has published 25 collections, for adults and for young people, over 40 years of publication; his latest, The Thirteenth Angel (Bloodaxe, 2022), a PBS Recommendation, is shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. He won the T.S. Eliot in 2009, a Cholmondeley Award in 2017, and is a keen collaborator, e.g. with Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (Mulfran, 2018), with scientists on the young people’s collection Dark Sky Park (Otter-Barry, 2018) and with artist Valerie Coffin Price and Welsh-language poet Cyril Jones on Troeon/Turnings (Seren, 2021).
Please join us on Saturday 20 May 2023, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation when Philip Gross, judge for our 2023 competition, will present the winners with their prizes. The winners, Laura Theis, Sara-Jane Arbury and Steve Pottinger will read their winning poems and others and Philip will also read his own work.
You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome. Read all about the poets and musicians below:
Philip Gross
Photo credit: Stephen Morris
Philip Gross has published 25 collections, for adults and for young people, over 40 years of publication; his latest, The Thirteenth Angel (Bloodaxe, 2022), a PBS
Recommendation, is shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. He won the T.S. Eliot in 2009, a Cholmondeley Award in 2017, and is a keen collaborator, e.g. with Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (Mulfran, 2018), with scientists on the young people’s collection Dark Sky Park (Otter-Barry, 2018) and with artist Valerie Coffin Price and Welsh-language poet Cyril Jones on Troeon/Turnings (Seren, 2021).
Laura Theis (1st Prize)
Writing in her second language, Laura Theis received a Distinction from Oxford University’s MSt in Creative Writing. Her work appears in venues such as Poetry, Mslexia, Magma, Rattle, and Strange Horizons, and anthologies by Candlestick Press, Broken Sleep Books, Pan Macmillan, and Aesthetica, amongst many others. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut ‘how to extricate yourself’, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. She was the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Arthur Welton Award, the AM Heath Prize, EAL Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, Mogford Prize, Hammond House International Literary Award, and a Forward Prize nomination.
A runner-up for the Mairtin Crawford Award, she was shortlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize, the Bridport Prize, the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize, the Hippocrates Prize, the Alpine Fellowship, and a finalist for numerous other literary awards including the National Poetry Competition and the BBC Short Story Award. Her forthcoming book ‘A Spotter’s Guide for Invisible Things’ has won the 2022 Live Canon Collection Prize.
She lives in Oxford with her partner (a neuroscientist) and her dog (a lunatic).
Sara-Jane Arbury (Joint 2nd Prize)
Sara-Jane Arbury is a writer, poet, performer and tutor. She has collaborated with many organisations including Oxford University Press, the National Literacy Trust, Ledbury Poetry Festival and Writing West Midlands, and is a former Director of the Voices Off programme at Cheltenham Literature Festival. Sara-Jane was a finalist in the 2021 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition and longlisted for The Plough International Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in anthologies, most recently Tools Of The Trade: Poems For New Doctors published by The Scottish Poetry Library. Sara-Jane is Writer-in-Residence for Herefordshire’s site-specific theatre company Feral Productions.
Steve Pottinger (Joint 2nd Prize)
Steve Pottinger is a founding member of Wolverhampton arts collective Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists. He’s an engaging and accomplished performer who has performed the length and breadth of the country, and his work regularly appears online in CultureMatters and the Morning Star. His sixth volume of poems, ‘thirty-one small acts of love and resistance’ published by Ignite Books, is out now. His website is at https://stevepottinger.co.uk/
Vulva Voce
Julia Sandros-Alper violin
Georgina Finlayson violin
Nadia Eskandari viola
Lucy McLuckie cello
“Rarely have I felt so moved (and frankly, knocked sideways) by a string ensemble performance.” Michelle Phillips, RNCM
Vulva Voce is an all-female genre-defying string quartet that brings exciting, dynamic performances of music composed by women and underrepresented voices to spaces and venues beyond the concert hall. Their mission is to break away from long held conventions of classical music and the string quartet, presenting audiences with radical and refreshing musical experiences. All classically trained, but with interests in folk, jazz, improvisation, contemporary classical and experimental music making, their performances are a unique delve into female composers from across centuries.
Established in 2021 at the Royal Northern College of Music, Vulva Voce are winners of RNCM’s StART Creative Innovator Award 2022 and the Elias Chamber Music Prize. They have recently performed at Pianodrome at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in the Connect Chamber Music Festival in Manchester. This summer, they were the quartet-in-residence at the South Downs Summer Music Festival.
Vulva Voce appears by kind permission of the RNCM.
We are delighted to announce the three winners of our 2023 competition judged by Philip Gross:
Laura Theis (1st)
Sara-Jane Arbury (joint 2nd)
Steve Pottinger (joint 2nd)
All three winners will join Philip Gross on 20 May at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a free event where they will read their winning poems and also read some of their other work. Philip Gross will also read for us (more details of this event will follow shortly). If you can’t make it to this event the poems will be published on the website after the event.
Many congratulations are also due to the five poets whose poems Philip Gross has singled out for commendation (in alphabetical order):
Ken Evans
Naoise Gale
Vlad Pasca
Thea Smiley
Christian Ward
The Winners
Laura Theis (1st Prize)
Writing in her second language, Laura Theis received a Distinction from Oxford University’s MSt in Creative Writing. Her work appears in venues such as Poetry, Mslexia, Magma, Rattle, and Strange Horizons, and anthologies by Candlestick Press, Broken Sleep Books, Pan Macmillan, and Aesthetica, amongst many others. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut ‘how to extricate yourself’, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. She was the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Arthur Welton Award, the AM Heath Prize, EAL Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, Mogford Prize, Hammond House International Literary Award, and a Forward Prize nomination.
A runner-up for the Mairtin Crawford Award, she was shortlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize, the Bridport Prize, the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize, the Hippocrates Prize, the Alpine Fellowship, and a finalist for numerous other literary awards including the National Poetry Competition and the BBC Short Story Award. Her forthcoming book ‘A Spotter’s Guide for Invisible Things’ has won the 2022 Live Canon Collection Prize.
She lives in Oxford with her partner (a neuroscientist) and her dog (a lunatic).
Sara-Jane Arbury (Joint 2nd Prize)
Sara-Jane Arbury is a writer, poet, performer and tutor. She has collaborated with many organisations including Oxford University Press, the National Literacy Trust, Ledbury Poetry Festival and Writing West Midlands, and is a former Director of the Voices Off programme at Cheltenham Literature Festival. Sara-Jane was a finalist in the 2021 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition and longlisted for The Plough International Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in anthologies, most recently Tools Of The Trade: Poems For New Doctors published by The Scottish Poetry Library. Sara-Jane is Writer-in-Residence for Herefordshire’s site-specific theatre company Feral Productions.
Steve Pottinger (Joint 2nd Prize)
Steve Pottinger is a founding member of Wolverhampton arts collective Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists. He’s an engaging and accomplished performer who has performed the length and breadth of the country, and his work regularly appears online in CultureMatters and the Morning Star. His sixth volume of poems, ‘thirty-one small acts of love and resistance’ published by Ignite Books, is out now. His website is at https://stevepottinger.co.uk/
Judge: Philip Gross
Photo credit: Stephen Morris
Philip Gross has published 25 collections, for adults and for young people, over 40 years of publication; his latest, The Thirteenth Angel (Bloodaxe, 2022), a PBS Recommendation, is shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. He won the T.S. Eliot in 2009, a Cholmondeley Award in 2017, and is a keen collaborator, e.g. with Lesley Saunders on A Part of the Main (Mulfran, 2018), with scientists on the young people’s collection Dark Sky Park (Otter-Barry, 2018) and with artist Valerie Coffin Price and Welsh-language poet Cyril Jones on Troeon/Turnings (Seren, 2021).
American expatriate Carrie Etter’s fifth collection of poetry, Grief’s Alphabet, is published by Seren in April. Her poems have appeared in The Guardian, The New Republic, The New Statesman, The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, and The Times Literary Supplement, among many other journals and anthologies internationally. She also writes short stories, essays, and reviews. In 2022 she joined the creative writing faculty at the University of Bristol.
Poets & Players 