Poets & Players featuring Liz Berry and more at The Whitworth

The Poets & Players poetry and musical compositions series is having a wonderfully varied Autumn season at The Whitworth, and has already played host to Ted Hughes Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize shortlistee John Glenday, Ben Wilkinson and Keshia Starrett, and seen its annual collaboration with Manchester Literature Festival, this year featuring the writing talents of Deryn Rees-Jones and TS Eliot Prize-winner Sean O’Brien (who was also found performing from his second collection of short stories, Quartier Perdu, at the Portico Library).

For the third event in the Autumn programme, Poets & Players welcome back Liz Berry, who appeared during their stretch at the John Rylands Library on Deansgate in 2015 with her debut collection Black Country, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. The Poetry Book Society Recommended poet will be bringing along new work, courtesy her latest pamphlet, The Republic of Motherhood, which came out with Chatto this year – the title poem just picked up the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018.

Liz will be joined on Saturday 17 November by fellow poets Sophie Herxheimer, Kapka Kassobova and Tariq Latif, who will each be writing a specially commissioned poem on the subject of ‘Migrations’ for the event, and the live music slot will be filled with a bit of jazz-inspired composition by Archipelago.

In the morning, Liz will be running a creative writing workshop at the Whitworth Art Gallery. It’s bound to be a sell-out, so email davidborrott@btinternet.com as soon as you can to reserve a place (£20).