THE RIALTO READING at the NATIONAL CENTRE FOR WRITING
We invite you to a Poetry Reading to be held in the Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich on Thursday October 11th., from 7 until 9 p.m.
Doors open at 7, join us for a glass of juice or wine, buy our books, settle down to listen at 7.30…
The Poets are Matt Howard, Michael Mackmin and Esther Morgan and they will be reading from their recent collections, Gall (The Rialto, 2018), And (Happenstance, 2017) and The Wound Register (Bloodaxe, 2018).
Matt Howard
Matt Howard lives in Norwich where he works for the RSPB. Matt is also a trustee of New Networks for Nature, an eco-organisation that asserts the central importance of nature in our cultural life. Gall is his first full collection of poems.
Matt Howard’s poetry is intense and shapely, but capable of daring imagination. He combines the intimate, careful voice of the naturalist with a lush and unusual diction. His poetic world is both empirical and uncanny, examining the ‘nature’ of the inner body as well as the wild. This is a wunderkammer of a book, a fully realised first collection.’ Kathleen Jamie.
Michael Mackmin
Michael has worked as an editor with The Rialto since he co-founded the magazine in 1984. From time to time he writes poems of his own. A few have been gathered into pamphlets, recently, Twenty Three Poems and From There to Here, both published by HappenStance and both now sold out. Helena Nelson generously published Michael’s full collection And late last year. The reading at Dragon Hall will be the first Norfolk reading from the book (apart from a two poem reading at Peter Scupham’s famous poetry picnic).
Here’s a little of what Hannah Lowe wrote in her recent review of And in The North,
‘…as for energy, the poems are full of it. The writing is robust, skilful and full of potent emotional force. The poems about poetry made me laugh aloud; others had me by the throat, in the way the best poems can.’
Esther Morgan
Esther Morgan’s fourth poetry collection, The Wound Register, is published by Bloodaxe Books (2018). www.bloodaxebooks.com. Its title is inspired by the Casualty Book, an official record of the casualty and sickness details for more than fifteen thousand soldiers of the Norfolk Regiment during the First World War. Written during the conflict’s centenary, the poems apply the concept to her own family history in the aftermath of her great-grandfather’s death at the Somme. Tracing the legacy of this loss over three generations, The Wound Register grapples movingly with the question of whether it’s possible to live and love while doing no harm. Esther Morgan was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire in 1970 and studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her third collection Grace (Bloodaxe, 2011) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She lives and works in Norfolk.
Please come to the event. The poetry will be dynamic! AND you will also be able to take a look at the Great Hall inside the landmark Dragon Hall, a medieval merchant’s house which is now home to the Norwich based National Centre for Writing.
A map of how to get there can be found here. There is some on street car parking in King Street and nearby Rouen Road. There’s also a large car park in Rouen Road. Walk down the alleyway beside Dame Julian’s church and you will find yourself on King Street.