Free reading at the Whitworth Art Gallery 21 April 2018, 2.30-4.00. All welcome.
Imtiaz Dharker
© Ayesha Dharker Taylor
Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and documentary film-maker. Awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, she has received the Cholmondley Award and an Honorary Doctorate from SOAS. Her collections include Postcards from god, I speak for the devil, The terrorist at my table, Leaving Fingerprints, Over the Moon and the latest, Luck Is the Hook, all published by Bloodaxe Books UK. She has had eleven solo exhibitions of drawings in India, London, New York and Hong Kong, and also scripts and directs video films, many of them for non-government organisations working in the area of shelter, education and health for women and children in India.
Karen McCarthy Woolf
Karen 
McCarthy Woolf was born in London to English and Jamaican parents. Her collection Seasonal Disturbances explores nature, the city and the sacred and is described by Warsan Shire, whose work she edited in Ten: The New Wave, as ‘a darkly humorous exploration of the human condition’. Karen’s poems are translated into Spanish, Turkish and Swedish and she has represented British writing globally, everywhere from Singapore, Mexico and the Caribbean to Sweden and the US.
Nick Makoha
Nick Makoha’s debut collection Kingdom of Gravity is shortlisted for the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and nominated by The Guardian as one of the best books of 2017. He won the 2015 Brunel International Poetry prize and the 2016 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize for his pamphlet Resurrection. A Goldsmiths, Cave Canem & Complete Works Alumni. His poems appeared in The New York Times, Poetry Review, Rialto, Triquarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Wasafiri. Find him at www.nickmakoha.com
Nick Makoha’s first full-length collection, Kingdom of Gravity (Peepal Tree £8.99), was the 2017 debut which most excited me. Focused on Uganda during the Idi Amin dictatorship, his poetry is charged with ethical sensibility. The lines protest as they sing “the song disturbed by helicopter blades…” but they don’t simplify things: they explore, and complicate. Personal witness and artistry are one. – Carol Rumens – The Guardian
Adam Fairhall
Adam plays jazz and free music on the piano, harmonium, accordion and organ. He has released five albums as leader or co-leader on the SLAM, Bruce’s Fingers and EfPi labels, to widespread critical acclaim (including an Album of the Year accolade by influential website Bird is the Worm for his 2012 album The Imaginary Delta). He receives frequent BBC Radio airplay, and a programme dedicated to his work was broadcast on Concertzender (Dutch radio) in 2014. He has been interviewed for The Wire and Jazzwise.
“A hugely accomplished instrumentalist” – The Wire
“Adam Fairhall is a total star” – Independent on Sunday
Poets & Players 