Lydia Unsworth is a poet whose recent collections include Mortar (Osmosis), Gag (above / ground) and These Steady Bulbs (above / ground). Her latest book, Arthropod, is published by Manchester’s Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Oxford Poetry and Shearsman Magazine.
Manchester Experimental Poetry and Arts Festival at Centenary Gardens
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
Brand new for 2025, the inaugural Manchester Experimental Poetry and Arts Festival takes place on the afternoon of Saturday 17 May, and features an incredible line-up. They say it themselves, but they’re not lying!
Organised by poet and if p then q publisher James Davies, formerly of The Other Room, the first year of the festival is free and features 13 amazing avantgarde poets and experimental artists. It also features a well-stocked bookstall and music, and is BYO food and drink (if you’re having a picnic, please remember to Leave No Waste).
Here’s the schedule and info on each of the performers…
1.10-1.55 Lydia Unsworth, Jazmine Linklater, Tom Jenks
Jazmine Linklater is a poet and writer based in Manchester, where she works for Carcanet Press and is the Northwest Editor of Corridor8. Her most recent poetry publication is Figure a Motion (Guillemot Press, 2020).
Tom Jenks is a writer and text artist living in Manchester, and the author of many collections of writing, most recently The Philosopher, out with Sublunary Editions. He is also the editor of zimZalla, a small press specialising in literary objects.
2.10-2.55 Nasser Hussain, Mishka Henner, JR Carpenter
Nasser Hussain lives in Leeds and teaches Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University. His constraint-based book SKY WRI TEI NGS, published with Toronto’s Coach House Books in 2018, is a collection in which every word is an IATA airport code. His second book with Coach House, love language, was published in 2023.
Mishka Henner is a Belgian artist living and working in Manchester, where you can currently see his work, Energy House 2.0 with Emily Speed, at Castlefield Gallery. His work has featured in several surveys of contemporary artists working with photography in the internet age.
JR Carpenter is an artist, poet and Lecturer in Performance Writing at University of Leeds. Their debut poetry collection An Ocean of Static was highly commended by the Forward Prizes 2019 and This is a Picture of Wind was listed in The Guardian’s best poetry books of 2020 and featured in the Digital Storytelling exhibition at the British Library 2023. Their new collection, Measures of Weather, was The Observer’s poetry book of the month for February 2025.
3.15-3.45 Jeremy Over, Iris Colomb
Jeremy Over was born in Leeds in 1961. He now lives on a hill near Llanidloes in the middle of Wales. His poetry was first published in New Poetries II in 1999 and he has had four subsequent collections with Manchester’s Carcanet Press: A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese (2001), Deceiving Wild Creatures (2009), Fur Coats in Tahiti (2019) and Fourth and Walnut (2024).
Iris Colomb is co-editor of HVTN Press, through which she just launched an artist-book imprint called Interruptions, and she is a founding member of the interdisciplinary collective No Such Thing. Her pamphlet I’m Shocked came out with Bad Betty Press in 2018, her chapbook just promise you won’t write was published by Gang Press in 2019, and she has a new book coming out with Pamenar, which will be launched at the festival.
4.15-4.45 Joey Frances, Rachel Sills
Joey Frances is a poet, poetry organiser and co-organiser of Peter Barlow’s Cigarette. His most recent pamphlets are takeaway night (ground game, 2023), i really did go & i really came back (ground game, 2023) and let’s do it (ground game, 2021).
Rachel Sills is a co-organiser of Peter Barlow’s Cigarette, our favourite regular avantgarde reading series in Manchester.
5.15-6 Gary Fisher, Scott Thurston, Tim Allen
Gary Fisher is a sound artist and experimental composer, who records, composes, performs and creates installations with various sound materials and approaches including found objects, found sounds, invented instruments, alternative approaches to traditional instruments, interacting with spaces and places.
Scott Thurston has written over twenty books and chapbooks of poetry and numerous works of literary criticism. His most recent books are Turning: Selected Poems 1995-2020 (Shearsman, 2023) and Failsafe: A Choreography (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). Since 2004, he has been developing kinepoetics, a practice integrating dance and poetry.
Tim Allen is the third organiser and host of the Peter Barlow’s Cigarette events in Manchester. He lives in Lancashire and used to live in Plymouth, where he edited Terrible Work and ran the Language Club. He is the author of various books from Shearsman, Oystercatcher, Knives Forks and Spoons, Red Ceilings, zimZalla and if p then q.
