WORD CLUB SPECIAL
This event on 24th March 2017 at 19:30 has past.
Open Mic Event
Contact: wordclub@hotmail.co.uk
Join Mark Connors and friends for a Word Club Headingley LitFest2017 Special at The Chemic Tavern, Leeds. Mark will be launching his first full length poetry collection, 'Nothing is Meant to be Broken' published by Stairwell Books. Open mic slots will be available to showcase the work of WORD CLUB's brilliant regulars.
Mark Connors is a widely published writer who won the Ilkley Literature Festival Open Mic Competition in both 2014 and 2015. His debut poetry pamphlet, Life is a Long Song (OWF Press, 2015) and debut novel, Stickleback (Armley Press, 2016) are both now in their second editions. Mark runs Word Club and performs and comperes regularly at literature festivals.
"Mark Connors' poems trace an enjoyable, sharp, often lyrical path through Irish paternal roots, growing up in seventies Leeds, step fatherhood and the things that suffer the breaks along the way in a life - hearts, crockery, snooker…There's humour and nostalgia among the everyday dread and death and dreams of America. There are puffins with hair like Ray Reardon's and a soaring that sets in every time birds come up, as they often do. Any time despair threatens: 'Even Gods can't change the past/so what chance do I have?' then words carry hopes on wings to repair another day because as Connors so brilliantly shows us: 'Sometimes poems like to follow/their own paths don't they?'"
Kate Fox
"These poems come dancing at you with a light step, but sock a knuckle-duster punch. Wired, but taut as the best jokes well-told, the poems shunt time and emotions around in unpredictable configurations. Connors keeps coming on." Peter Spafford
"An utterly generous collection. Mark opens up all of his landscapes – personal, political, geographical – and invites us in. From Leeds to Mull and Donegal via the highways of Arizona and beyond, these poems radiate a warmth – and an easy, quiet skill – which always holds the reader close. Loss, marathon running, murder, birds and Brexit, Mark approaches all his subjects with honesty, humour, and deep respect, until it seems he can find meaning – or a redemptive beauty – in anything. The result is a collection which resonates and lingers" Clare Shaw
"Well crafted and laced with humour, this is a mustang of a collection – wild and beautiful." Brett Evans
And don't forget, there's a brilliant chippy next door and you can bring yer chips in and wash 'em down with the finest ales known to man!
See you there!
Entry: Free
Time: 7:30pm
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