PN Review 250th issue launch at Christie’s Bistro

Following readings and gatherings at home and abroad, including November’s Jubilee Weekend with events at the Whitworth Art Gallery and Chetham’s and John Rylands Libraries, the Carcanet 50th birthday celebrations continue in 2020.

The Manchester-based poetry house has been publishing its own literary journal since 1973, when it was set up as Poetry Nation, and the latest issue of PN Review is its 250th – sounds like the perfect excuse for another shindig, so the spring issue will be welcomed into the world with a very special launch party, featuring readings by a wealth of writing talent.

Edited by Carcanet’s founder and editorial and managing director Michael Schmidt, the latest issue of the bi-monthly journal – jampacked with poems, essays, news, reviews, comment and more – will be available at the event, and readings from it will take place at this free event in the atmosphere-soaked, wood-panelled, marble bust-adorned, book-filled Christie’s Bistro, the former Science Library of Owens College tucked away in the old Quad at the University of Manchester.

The latest issue of PN Review is its 250th – sounds like the perfect excuse for another shindig, so the spring issue will be welcomed into the world with a very special launch party

Joining the reading throng are Vona Groarke (soon to be seen interviewing Eimear McBride at a Manchester Literature Festival precursor event) and John McAuliffe, both of the University’s Centre for New Writing, Liverpool-based Forward Prize 2019-shortlisted Helen Tookey, who has contributed to PN Review for 17 years and in the past held an editorial position on the magazine, and US-born, London-based Jane Yeh, spotted a couple of springs ago at CT favourite Poets & Players, and whose latest collection, Discipline, was a Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation.

Other contributors appearing at the launch are Jason Allen-Paisant, a Jamaican writer and University of Leeds lecturer; Kabul-born Parwana Fayyaz, who received the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for ‘Forty Names’, which originally appeared in PN Review 241; regular PNR poet for the last 14 years Stella Halyard, and Eric Langley, whose Carcanet-published Raking Light was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2017.

An exhibition of Carcanet’s rich history shown through archival materials held at John Rylands Library opens at the Gothic building on Deansgate in March 2020 and will run for six months. Keep checking back here for more details of that…