Beeston Poets - new season

Following the success of their inaugural season in 2012, Beeston Poets is back with another season of some of the most interesting poetry that is happening now.

All events take place at Beeston Library, Foster Avenue, Beeston, Nottingham NG9 1AW.

... and now you can buy tickets online!

Versions of the North, Friday April 26th 2013, 7.30pm

Featuring Ian Parks,
Elizabeth Barrett, Steve Ely
and Becky Cherriman

Tickets £7.50, £5.50 concessions

Yorkshire has a vibrant and diverse range of poets and poetry, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Andrew Marvell, Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes. Versions of the North, edited by Ian Parks and published by Five Leaves in April 2013, is the first anthology of modern Yorkshire poetry since Vernon Scannell's 1984 Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry. Parks has created a collection that showcases sixty-two of the best of today’s Yorkshire poets.

Pippa Hennessy of Five Leaves says, ‘Ian has put together a stunning collection of contemporary poems that all have a quintessential seam of pure Yorkshire running through their hearts."

Ophelia's Sistas, Friday May 24th 2013, 7.30pm

Featuring Char March
and Valerie Laws

Tickets £7.50, £5.50 concessions

Last July acclaimed poets Char March and Valerie Laws wowed the audience at Southwell Library Poetry Festival. It is impossible to describe how good it was to those who missed it, so now here’s another chance to hear these two very different voices. Char March’s ‘The Thousand Natural Shocks’ and Valerie Laws’ ‘All that Lives’ come together and take their audiences on an exploration of pathology, wild sex, dementia, lost pigeons, flirting at funerals, dogs in space, insanity – and more! Their poetry is deeply moving and side-splittingly funny. 

Sheelagh Gallagher, Nottinghamshire’s Literature and Reading Development Officer, says, ‘It was more like a firework display than a collaboration!’

Whistle, by Martin Figura, Friday July 5th 2013

A multimedia performance
produced by Martin Figura
and Apples & Snakes

Tickets £7.50, £5.50 concessions

At the centre of Martin Figura’s Whistle is his mother’s death at the hands of his father when he was nine years old. The work goes beyond this shocking central event to present us with a tender, beautiful, funny and moving coming-of-age story. Figura uses gentle humour and insight to give the reader and audience a profound and uplifting experience. The book was published by Arrowhead Press in 2010. The poem ‘Victor’ was awarded the Poetry Society’s 2010 Hamish Canham Prize, and the book together with the show was short-listed for the 2010 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. 

Cathy Grindrod, on behalf of Nottingham Poetry Society, says, ‘I will never forget seeing Whistle for the first time. Moving, powerful, memorable and highly recommended.’

“Profoundly honest and at the same time joyfully entertaining” – Independent on Sunday

Tickets £7.50/£5.50 concs, from:
Beeston Library
Foster Avenue
Beeston
Nottingham NG9 1AW
in person (cash/cheque)
or through the online shop