MLF Chapter & Verse
The Manchester Literature Festival Blog
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Q&A: Jean Sprackland
October 4, 2016
Jean Sprackland‘s new sequence of poems, Lock Songs, was inspired by a boating weekend along the Peak Forest Canal, from the countryside into the city of Manchester – and it was commissioned by MLF and the Canal & River Trust. Jean is the author of four acclaimed collections of poetry including Tilt (winner of the […]
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Q&A: Andrew McMillan
September 30, 2016
Andrew McMillan‘s debut collection of poetry, Physical, is a hymn to the male body, male friendship and male love that Michael Symmons Roberts called “a glorious, vivid exploration of the body as the loved and broken ground on which we meet and are transformed.” It won the Guardian First Book Award and the Fenton Aldeburgh […]
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Q&A: Garth Greenwell
September 23, 2016
Garth Greenwell‘s debut novel What Belongs to You has created a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, and was recently shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and longlisted for a National Book Award. A beautifully written book about desire and its consequences, it tracks the complicated relationship between an American teacher […]
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Q&A: Sarah Howe
September 19, 2016
Poet Sarah Howe‘s pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopaedia, was published in 2009, and she received an Eric Gregory Award in 2010. Her first full-length collection, Loop of Jade, won the 2015 TS Eliot Prize: the first ever debut collection to be awarded one of British poetry’s most prestigious prizes. AS Byatt called it ‘one of […]
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Q&A: Henry Normal
September 15, 2016
You might say Henry Normal is a poet with a very successful sideline in television. As a television writer and producer, he’s responsible for bringing us classics such as The Mrs. Merton Show, The Royle Family and The Mighty Boosh. His seventh collection, Staring Directly at the Eclipse, offers poems about death, human frailty and […]
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Review: Simon Armitage
November 6, 2015
Young Digital Reporter Elizabeth Gibson is thrilled by a first encounter with one of her favourite poets. I have long been a fan of Simon Armitage: his poem “Homecoming” is one of my absolute favourites. So it was with great excitement that I sat down in the Central Library to see him for the first […]
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Review: An Evening With Carol Ann Duffy
October 25, 2015
Abi Hynes enjoys an audience with Carol Ann Duffy, discussing poetry, writing and life. This was my first encounter with our delightfully local Poet Laureate, despite the fact I’ve been a fan since I was a teenager. She was the first poet I studied at school that I felt any sort of connection to; perhaps, thinking back, […]
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Review: Carcanet New Poetries
October 25, 2015
Sarah-Clare Conlon reports on a busy event showcasing four very different poets, and celebrating the best of new poetry in the UK. The seats fill up quickly for this Carcanet Press-hosted event in Central Library’s modern Performance Space – no mean feat for a lunchtime on what has since proved to be one of Manchester’s last sunny days […]
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Review: Kathryn Williams
October 22, 2015
After discovering singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams at this year’s Festival, MLF Blogger Fran Slater is a fan. Here he reports on her performance of Hypoxia, an album inspired by Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, at Hallé St Peters. I’ve been attending the Manchester Literature Festival for six years now. Each year it grows, the line-up becomes […]
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Review: True Harmony: Yeats at 150
October 22, 2015
Festival Blogger Abi Hynes is stirred by a lively musical and poetic seance raising the spirit of William Butler Yeats I was by no means an expert in WB Yeats when I joined MLF in a packed-out hall at the Whitworth Art Gallery last Thursday, to summon the poet’s ghost. The event was conceived of […]