Chemistry at The Chemic

Leeds live literature regular Chemistry offers an exciting mix of open mic acts and invited poets – hot on the heels of Helen Ivory and Luke Samuel Yates, who we hear we brilliant headliners, for Chemistry 20 there are three for the price of two: Yorkshire poets Gill and Mark Connors, as a double act, and the legend that is Rosie Garland.

Rosie Garland’s new poetry collection This Is How I Fight is only just out with Nine Arches Press and already it’s The Observer’s Poetry Book of the Month, so there’s incentive to hotfoot it over. Poet, fiction writer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets, Rosie Garland doesn’t seem to stop – as if a poetry collection wasn’t enough, the ink is barely dry on her latest novel The Fates (Quercus), a retelling of the Greek myth, while her short story collection Your Sons and Your Daughters are Beyond has also recently come out, with Manchester’s Fly On The Wall Press.

She has a passion for language nurtured by public libraries. Her poetry collection What Girls do the Dark (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize, and Queen of Tartan Noir Val McDermid has named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. Her novel The Night Brother was described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter”. Not without reason, then that in 2023, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The guest poets will have books for sale, so bring your pocket money to help support their artistic endeavours!

If you want to sign up for a three-minute open mic slot, make yourself known to host and award-winning poet Joe Williams when you arrive – this month’s optional theme is element number 20, which is Ca for Calcium (venue The Chemic is named after Johnstons Chemical Works, hence why Chemistry is themed on the numbered elements of the periodic table). Readers are drawn in a random order from the “Box of Mystery”, and the open mic keeps going until the box is empty: “We welcome everyone from first-timers to veteran performers, so if you want to give it a go, please do.”