Ira has made public art throughout the North East and also in the West Midlands and the South West. He made a documentary on Ezra Pound for Radio 4 last year, still on iPlayer. He is a regular on Radio 3’s The Verb and has been profiled on Channel 4. A mathematician by training, he is very interested in pattern and form, making poetry visually and with pure sound; he believes anyone can make poetry, as long as they stop worrying that it has to be *written*. He is a professional storyteller. He proofreads for academic journals for a living, and has had many residencies in schools. He won the Journal Arts Council Award for “innovative new ways of making art in communities” for his project., The Spennymoor Letters. He has lived in the North East since 2000. His new chapbook is called “Goose”. He has been described by George Szirtes as “Harpo Marx meets Rilke” (https://www.facebook.com/
Angela Topping
Angela Topping has published six solo poetry collections, Dandelions for Mothers’ Day (1988, 1989), The Fiddle (1999), The Way We Came (2007), The New Generation (Salt 2010), I Sing of Bricks (Salt 2011) and Paper Patterns (Lapwing 2012).Topping was born in Widnes, Cheshire, to working class parents and educated in Liverpool at Broughton Hall Grammar School for Girls. After graduating from the University of Liverpool with a degree in English and Classical Civilization she went on to study for a postgraduate degree in Victorian Studies. Although writing from a young age (she first published poetry at the age of nineteen in Arts Alive Merseyside) Topping married and raised two daughters while writing her first two collections and editing two poetry anthologies, the first a collection of Christians writing and the second a festschrift for the Liverpool-based poet Matt Simpson, featuring works by U.A. Fanthorpe, Anne Stevenson, Roger McGough and Kenneth Muir. The friendship of Matt Simpson was a formative influence on Topping’s work and continued until his death in 2009.After working in education for twenty years, most notably at Upton Hall School FCJ, Topping now concentrates full-time on writing and has been the author of several critical works for Greenwich Exchange.In 2010, Topping teamed up with textile artist Maria Walker. Together they produced a joint exhibition of work based on The Lightfoot Letters, which were family epistles from 1923, which bizarrely had been written by Angela’s father’s family and purchased by Maria from an antique shop several years before she met Angela. The exhibition was first staged at The Brindley in 2011 and there are plans to hold further exhibitions in 2012 and 2013.Topping has also been in a number of notable anthologies, such as Split Screen, edited by Andy Jackson and published by Red Squirrel (2012) and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh (Salt 2009) edited by Rupert Loydell. One of her poems appeared on National Poetry Day poem cards in 2012. Her children’s poems have been included in over 50 anthologies and in 2011, she was the only poet to be highly commended in the Cheshire High Sherriff’s Prize for Children’s Literature. Her poems have been set for A level study. https://
Angela launches THE FIVE PETALS OF ELDERFLOWER (Red Squirrel Press).
Sarah L Dixon
Photo: by Mark Farley
Sarah L Dixon tours as The Quiet Compere and has obtained Arts Council funding for this project. The 2016 project was crowd-funded, partly through poemathons which involved writing 100 poems in 25 hours.
Sarah has been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Interpreter’s House, The Lake and Obsessed with Pipework among others. She recently had a poem printed ona beermat by Otley Word Feast press. Sarah’s inspiration comes from being by water and adventures with her six-year-old, Frank. She is still attempting to write better poetry than Frank did aged 4!
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Venue: Nexus Art Cafe, 2 Dale Street, Manchester
Tickets £3 here: http://
Open mic section available.
Books for sale.