Open-mic – 1st March
For CB1 March, we’re very happy to welcome Anne Berkeley as our Guest Poet! As always, there will be open mic spots available so feel free to bring a poem along to share!
Anne Berkeley has been involved with CB1 since Jenni Tucker first set it up in the ‘90s as an open mike session at the old CB1 café in Mill Road. She served on the committee for many years.
Her first full collection The Men from Praga (Salt) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize in 2010.
Previous publications include The buoyancy aid and other poems (Flarestack, 1997), and a selection in Poets 2002 (Carcanet). She was awarded a Hawthornden fellowship in 2004 and has won many prizes, including first prize in the TLS competition in 2000. She edited Rebecca Elson’s acclaimed posthumous collection A Responsibility to Awe (now a Carcanet Classic) and was one of the poetry group extraordinaire Joy of Six, with whom she toured widely.
Her latest collection Object Permanence was published last September by Michael Laskey’s Garlic Press.
Anne Berkeley is a poet with an extraordinary gift to make the quotidian into something miraculous. Her poems show us what we’ve missed in the overlooked moment, often with wonderfully dry humour, always with great precision. This long-awaited new collection should serve to remind us that she is a poet who can handle the difficult issues of both contemporary life and distant history with tremendous grace and skill.
Tamar Yoseloff, commenting on Object Permanence
…The collection as a whole is quiet, but it’s intensely alive – simmering.
Helena Nelson on Object Permanence
Entry will be £5 and it’s a 18:30 start. We’ll be running at the Town and Gown as usual. We look forward to seeing you there, whether you come just to listen or also to read a poem of your own.
Watch this page for further announcements and see our Facebook and Instagram pages. You can sign up here to be added to our mailing list or email info@cb1poetry.org.uk with any questions!