Below Stairs at Blacks Club

Contact: sophiablackwell@gmail.com

Book your free tickets here: tinyurl.com/ycxsoc96

A night of poetry and music featuring Jacqueline Saphra and Miriam Nash.

MIRIAM NASH

Miriam Nash is a poet, performer and educator who grew up in Scotland, England and Wales. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study poetry at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and graduated with an MFA in 2014. She has performed her work internationally, and brought poetry into schools, museums, mental health organisations and prisons in the UK, USA and Singapore. She was the first Writer in Residence at Greenway, Agatha Christie’s summer home, as part of Writing Places with the National Trust, Literature Works and The Poetry Archive. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and her pamphlet, Small Change (flipped eye), was published in 2013. She received an Eric Gregory from the Society of Authors in 2015, and was runner-up for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award in 2016. All the Prayers in the House, her first collection, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2017 and won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2018.
https://miriamnash.com/

JACQUELINE SAPHRA

Jacqueline Saphra is a poet, editor, agitator, teacher, organiser and word-enthusiast, but not necessarily in that order. She is also an enthusiastic collaborator, working with composers, musicians and visual artists. A founder of The Shuffle, a regular live poetry night, Jacqueline was Poet in Residence for Good Housekeeping and a board member for Magma Poetry. A book of prose poems, If I Lay on my Back I saw Nothing but Naked Women, illustrated by Mark Andrew Webber was published in 2014 by the Emma Press. There is also a specially composed series of musical ‘miniatures’ for ‘cello and piano by Benjamin Tassie to accompany the poems in performance. It won the Best Collaborative Work in the Saboteur Awards 2015. Her T.S.Eliot prize shortlisted collection is All My Mad Mothers, published by Nine Arches Press in 2017 and her new chapbook, A Bargain with the Light: poems after Lee Miller is published by Hercules Editions.

SOPHIA BLACKWELL (Your host)

Sophia Blackwell was born in Newcastle and started performing poetry with Hammer and Tongue Oxford as a member of their first ever international slam team. Her poetry has been anthologised by Bloodaxe, The Emma Press, Nine Arches and Sidekick Books. She is the author of three poetry collections, Into Temptation, The Fire-Eater's Lover and The Other Woman, and a novel, After My Own Heart. She is a board member of Poetry London and an original member of The Persisters (with Jacqueline Saphra) and Short Sharp Shock (with Isadora Vibes).

Entry: Free

Time: 7:30pm (Doors 7.30, show 8pm)