Nikolai Duffy and Ian Seed book launch at Manchester Met
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met is delighted to present this special event to launch poet Nikolai Duffy’s latest collection, Up The Creek, published by Knives Forks and Spoons Press, and flash fictioneer and short storyist Ian Seed’s short story pamphlet, Italian Lessons, out on Like This Press.
Up The Creek is a book about what happens when all the paddles have been sold to offshore investment funds. There are stories and poems about politics, puns, administration, bureaucracy, debt, advertising, self-diagnosis, self-medication, education, celebrity, managerialism, business, capitalism, militancy, migration, ornamentation, insurance scams, scams in general, success, great wealth, inequality, occupational psychology, mishaps, casual embarrassments, falling in love, going to the toilet, social justice, commodification, fear, smart phones, social media, global finance, folly, ambivalence, and the enduring power of two fingers.
Italian Lessons is the story of a young Englishman’s first weeks of living, working and falling in love in a foreign country. It charts an adventure into a new language and a different way of seeing the world. Permeated with bittersweet lyricism, Italian Lessons draws us into an atmosphere which is at once neorealist and yet hauntingly dreamlike. It is a story whose sights, scents and sounds will linger with us after the turning of the last page.
