Wainsgate Chapel’s 2013 season of music and spoken word performances will begin this weekend.
Following the successful debut of the “Poetry at Wainsgate” event last year, the new season begins on Sunday, April 14, with “Spring Rhythm: Poetry of Emergence” featuring a trilogy of poets, spearheaded by acclaimed performer Rosie Garland.
Described by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy as “a celebration of female sexuality, of power and liberation”, Rosie Garland is also a singer with The March Violets and has a semi-legendary alter ego, Rosie Lugosi, who is a performer, cabaret chanteuse and decadent hostess of events such as “Burlesque!” at The Lowry.
She has won the DaDa Award for her performance art, the Diva Award and an Alternative Oscar for her solo performances.
Rosie’s award-winning poetry is perhaps at its best in her thought-provoking collection “Things I Did While I Was Dead”, published in 2010, which articulates themes as diverse as relationships, childhood, serial-killers and gender.
This year her fiction debut “The Palace of Curiosities”, an Angela Carter-esque novel set in Victorian London, has been published by HarperCollins in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada.
John Siddique is the author of six books, the most recent of which is “Full Blood”.
His poetry, essays and articles have featured in Granta, The Guardian, Poetry Review, The Rialto, on BBC Radio 4 and very recently on shop windows in Hebden Bridge.
Think-Tank QED considers John to be one of the 21 most influential people in the UK with South Asian heritage, and the Times of India considers him “rebellious by nature, pure at heart”.
Simon Rennie has been performing and publishing poetry since 2005.
He has performed his work at events, festivals, and university readings across the North of England, establishing in 2007 the well-loved Manchester poetry event Inn Verse.
His publications include the collections “Little Machines” in 2009 and “Unless Otherwise Stated” in 2011.
The poet and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts has described Simon’s poetry as “full of assurance, skill and wit”.
“Spring Rhythm: Poetry of Emergence” starts at 3pm. Tickets, which are only available on the door, are priced £8 and £6, with a special £2 entry for under 18s.
For more information and details of upcoming concerts in the series, visit www.wainsgate.co.uk.