The event will include back-to-back readings of exciting contemporary poetry featuring Inua Ellams (The Actual, 2020), John McCullough (Panic Response, 2022) and Abi Palmer (Sanatorium, 2020). The readings will be followed by a book signing.
Part of Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival 2022.
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of: The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry and Film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon & Methuen. (Photo Credit: Andy Lo Po)
John McCullough lives in Hove. His third book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds (2019), won the Hawthornden Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. His previous collections have been Books of the Year for The Guardian and The Independent. He teaches creative writing at the University of Brighton and for organisations including the Arvon Foundation. His new book Panic Response is published by Penned in the Margins in 2022.
Abi Palmer is an artist, writer and filmmaker exploring the relationship between linguistic and physical communication. Key work includes Crip Casino—an interactive gambling arcade parodying the wellness industry and institutionalised spaces -shown at Tate Modern, Somerset House and Wellcome Collection (2018-20)—and Sanatorium—a fragmented memoir that jumps between a luxury thermal pool and a blue inflatable bathtub (Penned in the Margins, 2020). Personal essays and articles have been published by The Guardian, Vice and Wellcome Collection Stories. In 2016 she won a Saboteur Award for her multisensory poetry installation Alchemy. In 2020 she was awarded a Artangel Thinking Time award in order to address the pandemic. She was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Award For Artists in 2021. Abi can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @abipalmer_bot.