Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Rd, Manchester M15 6ER Free Event, no need to book.
Eric Ormsby delights in evocations of unsavoury creatures, and The Baboons of Hada (Carcanet, 2011) celebrates the vulture and the cod-worm as well as a reluctantly resurrected Lazarus with a fond and meticulous eye. But he also pursues other themes with marked exuberance of language: the ambiguities of family history, the foibles of his overbearing English grandmother, ports and harbours and the North Atlantic coastline. His previous collections include For a Modest God (Grove, 1995) and Araby (2001), a linked series of poems on the Arab world, in which he brings his professional interest as a historian of Islamic thought into direct collision with more lyrical impulses, including celebrations of the camel, the oasis and the V-8 engine.
He has lived in London since 2005 (after twenty years in Montreal) where he works as a Senior Research Associate at The Institute of Ismaili Studies.
Adam Strickson is a theatre producer, poet, script writer and librettist. His first collection, An Indian Rug Surprised by Snow, was published by Wrecking Ball Press in 2005. His second, Tear up the lace, came out with Graft Poetry in March 2011. He is Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds and lead artist for the imove Olympic cultural project Wingbeats. He currently has a poet’s residency with ‘Ceramic Review’.
Tara Bergin was born in Dublin in 1974. She is currently studying at Newcastle University for a PhD on Ted Hughes’s translations of János Pilinszky. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry London, Modern Poetry in Translation and PN Review and a selection of them are included in the Carcanet Press anthology New Poetries V.
Robin Bowles (accordion, piano) and Simon Prince (flutes, saxophone) play improvised music together as the group Our Liberated Winter. They draw on the soundworld of improvised contemporary and 20th century chamber music. They last performed in Manchester as part of the 2010 Manchester Jazz Festival and are currently producing a chamber group version of music taken from Eric Dolphy and Hanns Eisler. You can find some of their music here.
Poets & Players 