It’s a big night at Write Out Loud Bolton on Sunday 15 June. The event is also a curtain-raiser for Worktown, Bolton’s poetry festival, and a number of writers with poems in the festival anthology  are due to read there. Guest is poet, singer and musician Meriel Malone, with Julian Jordon and Gordon Zola sharing compere duties. Entry is free to the open mic night – with poems of a Bolton/north-west/industrial revolution theme if possible - at the Brooklyn pub, at 7.30pm. More details and Map 

Bolton’s poetry festival anthology will be launched at the official opening of the festival on Tuesday 24 June at the Octagon theatre in Bolton. Performers at the festival include Manchester-based  Anjum Malik,, fusing eastern and western poetic forms, at St George’s Gallery and Café on Wednesday 25 June at 7pm.  She will headline a performance by a collaboration of local writers many of whose first language is not English. A poetry-in-translation workshop will be held at Bolton Central Library in the afternoon, led by Bank Street Writers facilitator James Hartnell.

New York poet George Wallace, formerly poet-in-residence at Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman Centre, will lead a writing workshop on the afternoon of Thursday 26 June in Bolton Central Library. At 7pm he will headline a performance by local writers at St George’s Gallery and Café.  Manchester-based performance artist and musician Alabaster DePlume will bring a group of internationally respected musicians and performers to the Dog and Partridge on Friday 27 June. More details