Carcanet International Poets at The Portico Library

Canadian poet Sheri Benning heads up a trio of Carcanet poets on 2 May, hot on the heels of her appearance at the Centre for New Writing’s showcase of new anthology The Next Wave: Canadian Poetry In The 21st Century at the Burgess Foundation on 29 April.

This event at The Portico Library is the first in an international double bill featuring some of the Manchester poetry press (also publishers of PN Review)’s highly lauded writers from further afield – Sheri is here from Saskatchewan, where she lectures, and Christine Marendon is coming over from Germany to read from her dual-language (German/English) Heroines From Abroad, published last year. They’re joined on 2 May by Oxford-based Anglo-Welsh poet, playwright, screenwriter, songwriter, children’s author and translator Jenny Lewis, who will read from her recent translation Gilgamesh Retold.

Carcanet presents an international double bill featuring some of the Manchester poetry press’s highly lauded writers from further afield.

Sheri Benning’s Carcanet Press collection The Season’s Vagrant Light: New And Selected Poems marks her UK debut and includes pieces previously published in Canada, drawing on her strongly felt connection to her native landscape, rural Saskatchewan, and exploring the relationship between humans and the natural world. The book also includes some of her more recent work, travelling to Russia, New Mexico and Scotland, but she still entwines the physical landscape with memory and the landscapes of the mind.

Canada is revisited at the second of the double bill, on 16 May, when Ontario-born Marius Kociejowski, whose Collected Poems appeared in February, is joined by South Africa-born poet Carola Luther (Walking The Animals, Arguing With Malarchy) and leading Australian poet and essayist Chris Wallace-Crabbe, who has a special interest in the visual arts. He will be reading from his new collection Rondo, which is currently shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in the NSW Premier’s Literature Awards and paints a vivid portrait of Australia’s current position in a rapidly changing world.

Both events will include readings and a book signing. Drinks will be on sale and anyone attending both events will receive two complimentary drinks on 16 May. Tickets for 2 May are available here. Tickets for 16 May are available here.