Poetry Breakfast
Axis Festival is in the business of trying new and exciting things. This is the first time (unless you know otherwise?!) that the city has hosted a poetry breakfast. Not only will you be able to enjoy a scrumptious bank holiday brecky specially prepared by pieminsister for the occasion, you will also have the pleasure of experiencing some world class poems and words read by the authors themselves. All this for an amazing £7.50!
Lemn Sissay is artist in residence at The South Bank Centre 2007 -2008 as well as writer in residence at The Cambridge Literature festival, The Belfast Literature Festival, University of Arizona, California State University and Contact Theatre Manchester. Sissay is the author of four poetry collections: Tender Fingers in a Clenched Fist (1988); Rebel Without Applause (1992); Morning Breaks in the Elevator (1999) and The Emperor's Watchmaker (2000). He is also the editor of The Fire People: A Collection of Contemporary Black British Poets (1998), and his work has appeared in many anthologies. He is a regular contributor to Poetry Review and has judged various writers competitions such as The Arvon Poetry Prize and The John Lewellyn Literature prize He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio Fours Saturday Live and lives presently in East London.
www.lemnsissay.com
Kimberly Trusty is a Canadian writer based in Birmingham. She arrived in England five years ago to study Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature at the University of Warwick. Whilst at university she was welcomed into the poetry scenes of Coventry and Birmingham and decided to settle in England. The author of a solo collection of poetry, Darker Than Blue (McGilligan Books, Toronto), Kimberly’s poems have also been anthologised in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. As keen to perform as she is to publish, Kimberly has toured England with the spoken word shows Word Temple and Temptation, and has appeared as a guest artist at many venues nationwide, including the Ways with Words Festival in Dartington and Latitude Festival in Norwich.
www.myspace.com/facetygal
Nick Corder - After several false starts at other careers, he is now a professional writer, with a dozen published books and plays to his name, as well as being a feature-writer and columnist. He also teaches writing at the Open University and Manchester Metropolitan University and often works in prisons, the NHS and with community groups. He is currently writer-in-residence for Stoke-on-Trent Library Service and hopes that the workshops run as part of the residency will encourage budding writers to come out of the shadows. He has also been commissioned to write a book in which he hopes to capture the city as it is during his residency. Although more of a prose man than a poet, he’s prepared to be humiliated for the sake of a decent breakfast.
www.nicholas-corder.co.uk
Michael Callan - Attended St Joseph’s College, Trent Vale and City of Stoke on Trent Sixth Form College, Fenton and (briefly) University of Manchester. In 1973 his one act play ‘John Brown’s Body’ was performed by students at Stoke on Trent Sixth Form College and in 1975 another one act play, ‘The Four Horsemen’, was performed at Padgate College of FE, Warrington. From 1976 to June 2007 Michael had various jobs, claiming among them the most difficult job in the world: Cleaner at Shelton Bar Steelworks. In 1990 Radio Stoke’s Sunday Arts programme broadcast a few of his poems and the West Midlands Arts magazine ‘People to People’ published a short poem in November that year. At the same time a sketch was used by LWT on a ‘Hale and Pace’ show. He is a member of ‘City Voices’, a local creative writers’ group in Stoke on Trent and later this year will embark on a scriptwriting course at Staffordshire University
www.myspace.com/mickcallan
Breakfast at 10.00
Poems from 11 - 12.30pm
£7.50 including breakfast only available from pieminister
