Acclaimed poets to perform at special Borough of Culture readings
Award-winning poets Imtiaz Dharker and Liz Berry will be performing from their latest work in two FREE autumn events organised by UK charity The Reader as part of Wirral’s Borough of Culture celebrations.
The readings follow author Sarah Hall’s successful event at Birkenhead Central Library in August.
Prize-winning poet Imtiaz Dharker is ‘thrilled and honoured’ to be performing from her latest collection at the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton on Monday 14 October (6.00pm – 8.30pm), where she will be reading from and talking about her latest collection - Shadow Reader - published in May this year and illustrated with her own black and white drawings.
It’s exciting to bring Shadow Reader to Wirral for this exceptional Shared Reading. It is such a great idea, to gather as a community, to read aloud and think about a piece of writing together.
It’s inspiring to see how The Reader events extend the pleasure of reading and make it accessible to many more people as a shared experience. I’m thrilled and honoured that Shadow Reader has been chosen for this.
Shared Reading differs from conventional book groups where people read a book and come together to talk about it. In Shared Reading groups, a trained ‘Reader Leader’ selects a range of stories and poems to read aloud together to help people connect and share thoughts, feelings and experiences. Everyone is welcome and groups are free.
This time though, the authors will be joining the group to hear people’s responses and answer questions. There is no pressure for attendees to talk or read aloud.
A poet, artist and video filmmaker, Imtiaz was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014 for Over the Moon. Born in Pakistan, she grew up in Glasgow, lived in India for many years and is now based in London.
Her poems are on the GCSE and A Level syllabus, and she reads with other poets to more than 35,000 students across the UK a year at Poetry Live!
Book your FREE ticket to An Evening with The Reader and Imtiaz Darker at the Floral Pavilion on Monday 14 October
• 6pm Welcome & Shared Reading
• 7.15pm Break
• 7.30pm Reading from Imtiaz Dharker with Q&A
• 8.30pm Finish
Next month, award-winning Birmingham poet Liz Berry will read live from and discuss her latest novel-in-verse - The Home Child - at Wallasey Central Library on Friday 22 November (2.30pm – 5.00pm).
The Home Child is a book-length poem, inspired by the true story of Liz’s great aunt as a child far from home. It tells how Eliza Showell, 12-years-old and newly orphaned, boarded a ship that was to carry her from the slums of Britain’s Black Country to rural Nova Scotia in 1908.
Liz’s work, described as ‘a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands’ by The Guardian, celebrates the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Her poem Homing, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus.
She is a recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and Forward Prizes.
Book your FREE ticket to An Afternoon with The Reader and Liz Berry at Wallasey Central Library on Friday 22 November
• 2.30pm Welcome & Shared Reading
• 3.30pm Break
• 3.45pm Reading from Liz Berry with Q&A
• 5.00pm Finish
These Shared Reading sessions, together with the recent Wirral Poetry Festival, have ensured that poetry has been a wonderful and important part of our Borough of Culture celebrations this year.
As well as entertaining many hundreds of local people, I’m sure that they will have inspired some to have a go at writing themselves or perhaps get involved in their local reading groups, which is a fantastic legacy.
Copies of Imtiaz Dharker’s Shadow Reader and Liz Berry’s The Home Child will be available to purchase at each event with the opportunity to have them signed.
Both author’s poems are a firm favourite with The Reader’s Shared Reading groups. The Reader runs 424 Shared Reading groups across the UK in diverse settings, including open for all community groups.
If you are interested in training as a volunteer ‘Reader Leader’, please email Abi Blackburn.
For more information about The Reader visit their website, where you can also find a group nearest to where you live.
