An Evening with Arji Manuelpillai

Open Mic Event

Website: https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/events/an-evening-with-arji-manuelpillai/

Our contemporary poetry reading series ‘Go to the poets, they will speak to thee’ is running throughout 2022, curated and hosted by poet Kim Moore. We will be listening to what poets have to say about our turbulent times, and how poetry can cross borders to challenge, delight and inspire us. Each event in the series is part reading, part open mic – and the theme of the open mic changes every month!

William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads are full of portraits of people living at the margins of society. These poems often explore the story of what happened to these people for them to be living in the conditions they are living in. Our guest poet this month is Arji Manuelpillai, whose first collection Improvised Explosive Device is also driven by a desire to understand – in this case to examine what drives a person to commit an act of radical violence.

Our open mic theme this month is to write a poem which seeks to understand something – please feel free to interpret this widely! Whether your poem seeks to understand a huge political event, or why your local shop always runs out of loo roll, we are looking forward to hearing your poems!

Open mic slots are limited and must be booked in advance.

Price: £5.00 / £0.00

Time: 7:30pm