Poets & Players at Burgess Foundation
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
It’s the first Poets & Players of 2024, back at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation with an afternoon of words and music, featuring readings by Mary Jean Chan, Rachael Allen and Katie O’Pray.
Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for multiple prizes, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. Bright Fear, Chan’s second book, was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is currently shortlisted for the 2024 Writers’ Prize. In 2022, Chan co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems with the Manchester Writing School’s Andrew McMillan. Chan is the 2023-24 Judith E Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Rachael Allen’s first collection of poems, Kingdomland (2019), was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and was followed by God Complex; both are published by Faber & Faber. She was the recipient of a Northern Writers’ Award and an Eric Gregory Award. Born in Cornwall, works is now based in London, where she is the poetry editor for Granta magazine and Granta Publications, and she also works as a lecturer. She writes about poetry for a number of publications, including ArtReview, Tank magazine and Music & Literature, and she hosts the Faber Poetry podcast and is finishing a PhD in poetry.
Katie O’Pray is currently a creative facilitator and Barbican Young Poet. They have been the winner of The ruth weiss Foundation’s Emerging Poet’s Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. Their work has also been associated with the Manchester Writing Competition and the Magma Poetry Competition, among others. Their debut collection APRICOT was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2022.
Music this month comes courtesy Christopher Godhard, classical guitarist from the Royal Northern College of Music.
The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Performers often bring along books and CDs to sell, so perhaps offer your support that way – please note only cash payments are accepted.
