Liverpool Poetry Cafe at the Bluecoat

Liverpool Poetry Cafe at the Bluecoat

From January 2009 Liverpool Poetry Café continues to bring poets of note to Liverpool audiences with events being held at the Bluecoat. All readings are free. Please contact the Bluecoat direct to reserve tickets on 0151 702 5324 or call at the Box Office in person.

On Thursday 26th February @ 7pm Jo Shapcott is our lead guest poet.

Jo Shapcott – biography

Jo Shapcott is one of Britain’s leading poets and is President of the Poetry Society. She’s also a frequent BBC radio broadcaster and presenter. She teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, and is a Visiting Professor of Poetry at the University of Newcastle and at the University of the Arts, London. In 2006 she received a Cholmondeley award from the Society of Authors.

Her first collection, Electroplating the Baby (1988, Bloodaxe Books) was awarded a Commonwealth Prize and was followed by Phrase Book (OUP, 1992) and My Life Asleep (OUP, 1998) which won the 1999 Forward Prize for Best Collection. A selection ofher poems, Her Book, first published by Faber in 2001, was republished in 2006. In her most recent collection Tender Taxes (Faber & Faber, 2001) JO Shapcott reimagines Rilke’s French poems (including Les Fenetres and Les Roses). But these are more than versions. Shapcott argues with the originals and crosses the lines between translation and origination.

Our two supporting poets are both currently based in Preston and are first time readers at the Liverpool Poetry Café.

William Park – biography

William Park received a major Eric Gregory Award in 1990, and has been appearing in magazines since 1978. He is Magazine Listings Editor for the International Network and Community of Writers Society www.incwriters.co.uk and one of its founding members. His first full collection Surfacing, published by Spike Press in Liverpool in 2005, was reviewed in London Magazine, Critical Survey, The North, Ambit, and elsewhere. He has contributed poems to Stand, Poetry Review, The Observer, and numerous other publications. A second book Far From Home, is being completed.

ALICE’S AQUARIUM

I inherited this aquarium
of watercolours,
her three green fish.

One nibbles weeds,
another is anguished,
the third is in love.

Look, it blows a bubble:
‘If you go’
bursts in my mind.

William Park

Cynthia Kitchen – biography

Cynthia Kitchen is married with one son and has been writing and having poetry published since the 1980s. She is a primary school teacher by profession but now is semi-retired and draws her inspiration from Morecambe Bay, Cumbria. She has been published in a range of magazines and has been a prize-winner and runner-up in various competitions including Manchester, Chester, Lancaster, Ver. She has been featured and interviewed on Radio Merseyside. Her first collection – was published by Headland in 2008.

The following poem was shortlisted for the Bridport prize.

Deflations in Sad Weather

In a week of kestrel rain
and wind swooping on the smallest of us,
suffering the flung leaves.

We stepped across chaotic branches,
stumbled by rocks and salt marsh.
The heavens’ pourings’ fell

Portentous on our anoraks and hoods.
This might be a sign to save us
from something infinitely worse.

And then we saw them on the cliff path,
Punctured still with railing silver strings.
Their first brilliance now a mortal blue,
touched by mud and circumstance.

Cynthia Kitchen