Launch of Ticker-tape by Rishi Dastidar

Contact: https://www.waterstones.com/events/launch-of-ticker-tape-by-rishi-dastidar/london-piccadilly

From politics to pop, from the UK to California, wherever digital heartbeats flutter and stutter, Ticker-tape is a maximalist take on 21st century living. Rishi Dastidar’s first full collection, published by Nine Arches Press, showcases one of contemporary poetry’s most distinctive voices, delivering effervescence with equal servings of panache and whiplash-quick wit.

Here is sheer madcap ingenuity and also impressive breadth; ranging from odes of love to deconstructed diversity campaigns and detonations of banter’s worst excesses, plus appearances from ex-SugaBabes, a shark who comes to tea, to the matters of matchstick empires and national identity. Ticker-tape is bold, adventuresome and wry – an unmissable and irrepressible debut.

Rishi Dastidar is a fellow of The Complete Works 2, consulting editor at The Rialto magazine, member of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen collective and chair of Spread The Word. His poetry has been published by the Financial Times, Tate Modern and the Southbank Centre. When not being a poet, he is a copywriter, runner and pasta eater.

Katie Griffiths was selected as one of the Volume 1 Primers poets. She is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and was joint runner-up in the 2014 Poetry School/Pighog Poetry Pamphlet Competition. She is singer-songwriter in the band A Woman in Goggles, which is also the name of her blog. She was born in Northern Ireland, grew up in Ottawa, Canada and now lives in Surrey.

Alex MacDonald has an Eric Gregory Award and was highly commended in the 2015 Faber New Poets scheme. His poems have been published in Best British Poetry 2015, Poetry London and 3:AM Magazine. He is co-editor of Poems In Which, was Digital Poet in Residence at the Poetry School and ran the reading series Selected Poems at the V&A Reading Rooms. He lives near lots of pubs and a park full of parakeets.

Jill Abram is Director of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and created the Stablemates reading series (last Thursday of the month at Waterstones Piccadilly). Her poems have been published in The Rialto, Under The Radar and New Boots And Pantisocracies. She grew up in Manchester, travelled the world and now lives in Brixton (don’t call her a Londoner).

Entry: FREE

Time: 7 for 7.30pm