6th November 2023
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Content Warning: Discussion of sensitive topics such as alcoholism and rape.
Liverpool University Press are excited to announce the launch event of Janette Ayachi, Helen Calcutt, and Hannah Copley’s poetry collections, marking the tenth year of Pavilion Poetry. Celebrating the very best of contemporary poetry, Pavilion Poetry will publish the three beautiful collections in the spring of this year. The launch will showcase each book on the evening of 2nd May, including readings by the poets of each collection and an opportunity for discussion afterwards. The event begins at 5pm and will be located at the School of the Arts Library on the First Floor. Tickets to the Pavilion Poetry Launch are free and are available here.
Image Credit: Alison Welsby on https://liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2023/10/05/national-poetry-day-spring-2024-pavilions/
In her newest collection, Ayachi draws upon the distress of love and longing in a powerful piece which creates a balance and connection between the physical and abstract concepts of fire and destruction. While some poems focus on the themes of desire and yearning, others touch on the subjects of natural disasters in the world and the destruction and pain they bring. One outstanding piece that brings these themes to light is ‘Explosion’. This poem is a thought-provoking piece on the heart-breaking disaster in Beirut. This transports you to the point of view of those who suffered the scenes first-hand. It prompts you to empathise with their emotions after such tragedy.
Janette Ayachi is an award-winning Scottish-Algerian author who is a beloved fixture of the Scottish performance poetry scene. Her outstanding accomplishments in the industry are a credit to both the LGBTQ+ community and the POC/BAME community. She has been awarded ‘Winner of the poetry book of the year Saltire Literary Award, 2019’, shortlisted for ‘Write Queer London’, longlisted for a ‘Gavin Wallace Fellowship’, and a list of many other achievements. As she travels across the globe performing beautiful pieces of poetry, she continues to inspire in her writing, with poetry focussing on nature, fire, love, and desire. She is now releasing her second collection with Pavilion Poetry at Liverpool University Press following the success of her first book, Hand Over Mouth Music.
Quick Fire, Slow Burning can be pre-ordered here.
Find Janette on Instagram: @j.ayachi_poet
Find Janette on X: @janetteayachi
Image Credit: Alison Welsby on https://liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2023/10/05/national-poetry-day-spring-2024-pavilions/
A lyrical biography of a bird and a fragmented study of a flawed and mutable creature bearing its name, Hannah Copley’s Lapwing migrates across voices and blurs the divide between bird and human, self and other to explore restlessness, addiction, and ecological and personal grief. Copley’s poems call out from empty nests, drained wetlands, and ploughed fields to create a soundscape of endangerment and wonder. Lapwing asks that we consider how, like the bird itself, we must all dissemble to survive.
Hannah Copley is a writer, editor and academic based in South-East England. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The London Magazine, Poetry Birmingham, Stand, Under the Radar, Bath Magg, and other publications and anthologies. Broken Sleep Books published Hannah’s first collection, Speculum, in 2021. She is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Westminster and a poetry editor at Stand magazine.
Lapwing can be pre-ordered here.
Find Hannah on Instagram: @hlcopley
Find Hannah on X: @HCopley
Image Credit: Alison Welsby on https://liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2023/10/05/national-poetry-day-spring-2024-pavilions/
Each poem, in its self-enquiry, harnesses Calcutt’s vital and breathtaking vocabulary to quietly observe the speaker. She achieves this whilst allowing the physicality and rawness of the moment to live and breathe. In the poems, we encounter scenes of male sexual violence, extreme emotional isolation, and motherly guilt, as the ache to reclaim liberty in sexuality and love finds a fractal beauty in the poems. Ruthless, and dazzling, the poems weave an intense musicality with frank, unhindered storytelling, to cast a clear eye on sexual identity, and shame. This is a collection of burning defiance and self-love. The collection speaks with fierce determination as it navigates a way back to a sensual, whole-feeling self. And there’s a vibrant message – ‘feel all’, so that as we feel we might express ourselves to our fullest, with authenticity and power.
Helen Calcutt is a dance artist, choreographer and award-winning poet. Helen also writes for the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Poetry London and the Wales Art Review. Loughborough University awarded her an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 2023. The Society of Authors and Arts Council England awarded funding to Helen’s writing. Her pamphlet ‘Somehow’ (Verve Press, 2020) was a PBS Winter Bulletin Pamphlet and Poetry School Book of the Year. Her anthology, ‘Eighty-Four’ (Verve Press, 2019) was a Saboteur Award shortlist, and a Poetry Wales Book of the Year. Helen’s poem ‘Rope’ was made into a short film by Paul Stringer.
Feeling All the Kills can be pre-ordered here.
Find Helen on Instagram: @helen_calcutt
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