Poets & Players at Burgess Foundation

Manchester regular Poets & Players is a must-go for lovers of words as well as music, presenting performers both established and emerging, with the autumn season kicking off with headline poet Lorna Goodison on a rare visit from America.

As part of her UK and Ireland reading tour, Lorna Goodison will read from her new translation of Dante’s Inferno , which came out with Manchester publisher Carcanet Press in April.

Lorna Goodison was born in Jamaica, and was Poet Laureate of Jamaica 2017-2020. She has won numerous awards for her writing in both poetry and prose, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Gold Medal from Jamaica, the Henry Russel Award for Exceptional Creative Work from the University of Michigan, and one of Canada’s largest literary prizes, the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People (2007). Along with her award-winning memoir, she has published three collections of short stories (including By Love Possessed, 2011) and nine collections of poetry. Her work has been translated into many languages, and she teaches at the University of Michigan, where she is the Lemuel A Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies.

Lorna will be joined by poets Charlotte Eichler, Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal and Jack Faricy, who were invited by the P&P team to respond to a commission on the theme ‘Close to the Edge’ and who will be reading their new work at the first event back after the summer break.

Charlotte Eichler is a poet based in West Yorkshire. She is the author of Swimming Between Islands, which was published by Carcanet in 2023 and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize in 2024. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including New Poetries VIII, PN Review and The Manchester Review. She is currently poet-in-residence for the AHRC-funded project Ragna’s Islands and is working on new poetry inspired by the Saga of the Earls of Orkney and the islands of Fair Isle, Papay and North Ronaldsay.

Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal is a writer and literary translator based in Manchester, working towards a practice-based PhD at MMU’s Centre for Place Writing. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, German and Italian, and have appeared in Ambit, Bad Lilies, Gutter, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, Prototype, The Irish Times, and elsewhere. Her criticism has appeared in Brixton Review of Books, Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry & Poetics and Wasafiri. In 2018, she was selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series and she was the 2021 Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent. Her most recent book, The Yak Dilemma, is published by Makina Press, and a limited-edition pamphlet of plague poems, Bitter Almonds, will be out with Salvage Press later this summer.

Jack Faricy is a teacher and poet based in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire. His poems have won prizes and appeared in magazines. His debut collection, Traces, is published by Calder Valley Poetry. He regularly attends workshops with Huddersfield’s Albert Poets and is currently working on a PhD project, which is a poetic exploration of the M62 and the landscapes it connects.

The music this month comes courtesy versatile and prolific Leeds-based pianist and composer Simeon Walker, who has quickly emerged as a leading light in the burgeoning Modern Classical scene and who has played previously at P&P – and is great!

Everyone is welcome to P&P and, as always, the event is free (no need to book tickets) – show your appreciation by buying books and CDs from the performers on the day (please note only cash payments are accepted).