Join us at Gay's the Word for an evening of stunning poetry with two fantastic writers and performers, Sophia Blackwell and John McCullough. £3 on the door with free refreshments provided. Please RSVP here on Facebook.
The Fire-Eater's Lover by Sophia Blackwell
The Fire-Eater's Lover is about performance of all kinds.
Whether it's the rituals of seduction, the trials and triumphs of squeezing into a red vintage dress or the adrenalin of putting a microphone to your lips, these poems are filled with the joy of performing.
The Fire-Eater's Lover conjures together scraps of everything from classic blues songs to job rejection letters, marriage proposals and medical questionnaires, and whips them into a circus of illicit sex, love lost and found and moments of illumination. Published by Burning Eye Books
Spacecraft by John McCullough
Margins, edges and coastlines abound in John McCullough’s
tender, humorous explorations of contemporary life and love.
Spacecraft navigates the white space of the page and the distance between people, encompassing everything from lichen to lava lamps, and from the etymology of words to Brighton’s gay scene. Its powerful central sequence concerns the death of the author's first partner from an AIDS-related illness. Spacecraft is a humane, spellbinding collection from the winner of the 2012 The Polari First Book Prize. Published by Penned in the Margins
'Alive to the pathos in a punctuation mark, walking through dark places with a spring in its step, Spacecraft is a marvellous book.' - Sarah Howe
About the writers:
Sophia Blackwell was born in Newcastle. She studied English at Oxford, where she started performing poetry with Hammer and Tongue as a member of their first ever international slam team, representing the UK. Her poetry has been anthologised by Bloodaxe, The Emma Press, Nine Arches and Sidekick Books. She is the author of one poetry collection, Into Temptation (2009), and a novel, After My Own Heart (2012) from Limehouse Books. The Fire-Eater's Lover (Burning Eye Books) is her second poetry collection.
John McCullough's first collection of poems The Frost Fairs won the Polari First Book Prize in 2012. It was a Book of the Year for The Independent and The Poetry School, and a summer read for The Observer. John has produced comissions for the British Museum and the British Fil Institute, and his lyrics for a song cycle, Seven Doors of Danny, will be performed by the Actually Gay Men's Chorus in Spring 2016. He teaches creative wiritng at the Open University and New Writing South, and lives in Hove.