Wordlife ft Caroline Bird/Rachel McCrum

Contact: joe@wordlife.co.uk

TICKETS: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/apples-and-snakes-and-wordlife-present-rachel-mccrum-and-caroline-bird-tickets-36200951019#tickets

We're honoured to host the first date on Rachel McCrum and Caroline Bird's tour, as they launch their first and fifth collections respectively. They will be supported by stellar local poets Helen Mort and Rachel Bower.

**CAROLINE BIRD**

In her fifth collection of poetry Caroline Bird surrenders her poetic weaponry and goes on a quest to write the ‘simple truth’about the badlands of the human psyche, asking what it is that keeps us living; intoxication and inebriation, rehab in a desert and adultery for atheists, until finally Bird edges us out of danger, ‘revving on a wish’. Caroline in an Eric Gregory Award-winning poet and is currently working with the Old Vic.

'What an original captivating and spellbinding voice. Bird is fearless like 'the girl who dropped her ice-cream down a volcano and leaped in after it'. She is dangerous and witty too with a rare quality of imagination. ' Lemn Sissay

**RACHEL MCCRUM**

Recognised as one of Scotland's highest profile poets and performers and co-founder of cult spoken word night Rally & Broad, Rachel McCrum's first collections asks what happens when we raise our voices? What happens when we are no longer heard? Rachel's first pamphlet won a Callum MacDonald Award, and she was BBC Scotland's first ever poet-in-residence.

‘This is angry poetry, hungry poetry but never lean, mean poetry... this is poetry that performs itself on the page out loud and proud – then can turn on a sixpence and stop the heart with a sudden, spare moment of naked vulnerability and tenderness.’ Liz Lochhead

**HELEN MORT**

Helen Mort was born in Sheffield. Her first collection 'Division Street' won the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize. Her collection 'No Map Could Show Them' (Chatto & Windus) is a PBS Recommendation. She blogs at 'Freefall'.

​Helen Mort is among the brightest stars in the sparkling new constellation of young British poets - Carol Ann Duffy

**RACHEL BOWER**

Rachel is a poet, academic and editor. She is a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds investigating the links between poets in Leeds and Nigeria in the 1950s and 60s. Her academic book, Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980-2010 is published by Palgrave Macmillan in August 2017.

Rachel’s poetry pamphlet, Moon Milk, will be published by Valley Press in May 2018. She is currently co-editing an anthology with Helen Mort entitled Verse Matters, out with Valley Press in November 2017.

Price: £5.00 / £7.00

Time: 7:00pm (7:30 start)