Electric Arc Furnace at La Biblioteka, Sheffield
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
This relatively new Sheffield poetry reading series has been bringing together innovative poetries from around “the South Yorks hinterlands and further-flung” since November 2016 – and, this month, Electric Arc Furnace #5 welcomes two headliners from That There.
London-based poet and academic Nisha Ramayya has two poetry pamphlets out with Oystercatcher Press, Notes on Sanskrit (2015) and Correspondences (2016), and her writing can be found in the literary magazines Ambit, The White Review and Zarf (edited by Calum Gardner, appearing this February at Manchester’s The Other Room).
Ollie Evans is a writer, performer and English language teacher from London, with poetry published by Veer Books, Red Ceilings Press and Contraband, including his collection last year, Portraits of the Middleincome.
Previous outings for Electric Arc Furnace have featured avantgarder Edmund Hardy plus 3:AM magazine’s co-editor of fiction Eley Williams, whose collection Attrib. and Other Stories was picked out as ‘the best of debut fiction’ by none other than multi-award-winning and Manchester Literature Festival regular Ali Smith.
Electric Arc Furnace takes place at Sheffield City Centre’s La Biblioteka, a ‘nimble, nomadic’ book and zine store and multidisciplinary cultural space founded in 2015. EAF employs a pay-what-you-can policy on the door, with a suggested contribution of £4 for waged audience members (£3 unwaged), and proceeds going to the contributing performers’ travel expenses. It’s BYOB, so with savings there, be sure to dig deep to keep the talent supply going.
