2008

Fri Jan 18 Helen Ivory
Helen Ivory was born in 1969, and lives in Norwich. She has worked in shops, behind bars, on building sites and with several thousand free-range hens. She has studied painting and photography and has a Degree in Cultural Studies from Norwich School of Art.  In 1999 she won an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection, The Double Life of Clocks, was published by Bloodaxe in 2002. She is now Academic Director and teacher of Creative Writing for Continuing Education at the University of East Anglia. Her latest collection is The Dog in the Sky (Bloodaxe 2006), which ‘offers a view of the world that is skewed, vibrant and larger than life.’

‘Her best poems are quite exquisite, not so much a matter of known poetic craft as of vision, instinct and frayed edgy experience playing it dead straight’ – GEORGE SZIRTES

Fri Jan 25: Social event and read-around
Free entry.  Bring some food and/or drink and a couple of short poems to read – your own or someone else’s.

Sat Jan 26, Friends Meeting House, 16 Queens Road, 3pm to 4.30:
Launch of LINES NORTH, Selected Poems by Pat Corina
published by Soundswrite Press in association with Leicester Poetry Society.

Fri Feb 8: Open Mic Evening
Bring along your poems to read at an open mic evening. Everyone gets a chance for 5 to 15 minutes, depending on how many poets come. Sonnet or Song, Limerick or Lyric, Ode or Oddity, Rant or Rap (but no Sagas, please), all styles are welcome.  Everyone gets applause, so don’t be shy! No prizes. Drinks and snacks provided.

Fri Mar 7: Themed Evening:  John Lucas leads a discussion on the Forward Prize nominated poems

 The distinguished poet  and critic John Lucas leads a discussion on the six poems short-listed for this year's Forward Prize. The poems are: "The Hut in Question" by  David Harsent; "Thursday" by Lorraine Mariner; "Dunt" by Alice Oswald;  "The Day I knew I wouldn't Live for Ever" by Carole Satyamurti; "Goulash"  by Myra Schneider; and "Bufo calamito - the Natterjack toad" from "The  Birkdale Nightingale" by Jean Sprackland.

Fri Apr 11 Members’ Reading – Siobhan Logan, Graham Norman, Jean Harbour

Mon April 28th: Visual & Verbal Poetry at the University of Leicester
6pm room BEN LT3: (in association with the Leicester Poetry Society) Poetry reading in Catalan and English with the Catalan poet Josip Vicent Cabrera i Rovira and David Bircumshaw
 and also Tues April 29th 4 - 6 pm SB0.01: avant-garde poetry workshop with Catalan materials. To book for the latter event (20 places available) contact Dr Anna Vives anna.vives@le.ac.uk by 25th April.

Fri May 9: G S Fraser lecture – Richard Burns
Founder of the Cambridge Poetry Festival, Richard Burns (Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, 2003-5, and currently Preceptor at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) has published 15 volumes of poetry, and won several prizes. His work has been translated into 17 languages. He is especially interested in multicultural and multilingual situations.  This event is in partnership with Leicester City Council.

Fri June 13 Members’ reading - Andie Wingham, Norman Harrington, Anne Kind

Saturday 21^st June 2 p.m. to 4 p.m: Picnic in the Garden – Belgrave Hall Gardens

Fri September 26th AGM. Please attend! There will follow a read-around and the possibility of food. If you will, write or bring a poem concerning scents or smells. .
   THIS IS THE INAUGURAL EVENT AT THE FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE

Fri October 17th Michael Haslam

   Most definitely a Northern poet. (b. Bolton, Lancashire, 1947) has lived at Foster Clough, on the Pennine moor-edge above Hebden Bridge, in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, since 1970, writing, loving and labouring in the immediate vicinity. Publications include Continual Song (Open Township 1986), A Whole Bauble: Collected Poems 1977-94 (Carcanet 1995),The Music Laid her Songs in Language (Arc 2001) and A Sinner Saved by Grace (Arc 2005).“One clouding threat of recent years had been that typewriters were becoming obsolete, unserviceable. I had an outsider's suspicion that there was a party going on, on the Internet. So, belatedly, I computerised in the year of 2005. There'll never be ought as good as a book, for reading poetry in. But this machine changes everything, bar nib and paper, up to that point, though I don't quite get fully how as yet”.
       From ‘For a Life - Bibliography’ at the poet’s website.

Fri 7th November Marianne Boruch

Marianne Boruch is an American poet. She graduated from the MFA Program at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1979, and after teaching at Tunghai University in Taiwan, and at the University of Maine at Farmington, went on to develop the MFA program in creative writing at Purdue University and was its director until 2005. She has taught there since 1987 as well as at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. (Wikipedia notes, including links)

Fri 28th November  Competition Awards Evening

Fri 12th December Siobhan Logan  ‘Northern Lights’