Liz Berry at Manchester Poetry Library

Manchester Poetry Library’s spring/summer poetry reading series continues with the second of three events featuring the amazing award-winning poet and author Liz Berry.

Liz Berry’s debut collection Black Country (Chatto, 2014) won a Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. Her pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood came out with Chatto in 2018 – and the title poem picked up the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018. In 2021, she published The Dereliction (Hercules Editions), a collaboration with artist Tom Hicks, and her most recent publication is a novel in verse, The Home Child (Chatto, 2023), which picked up The Writers’ Prize Book of the Year 2024 and was described by Hannah Lowe as “extraordinary”.

Liz Berry lives in Birmingham with her family and her work is described as “a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands” (Guardian), celebrating the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Her poem ‘Homing’, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus and she is a patron of Writing West Midlands.

At this event among the Manchester Poetry Library bookshelves, Liz Berry will read from a selection of her poetry, which will be an absolute treat (fingers crossed for ‘Birmingham Roller’!), and a Q&A will follow, so come prepared with questions.

Manchester Poetry Library’s spring/summer poetry reading series gets underway with Jason Allen-Paisant on 7 May and continues with Luke Kennard on 20 June. All events are completely free. You can also catch MPL’s programme manager Martin Kratz reading his own work at Poetry at the Dusty Miller.