Open Eye Gallery is proud to be a commissioned organisation for EuroFestival, which will take over Liverpool in the lead up to The Eurovision Song Contest. HOME programme includes exhibitions, publications and events in the gallery and across the Liverpool city region. 

Poetry inspired by the vibrant and diverse contemporary Ukrainian photography is an essential part of this programme: there will be new commissions curated by the Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library, workshops from Liverpool Poetry Space and the Windows Project, a poetry evening at Open Eye Gallery as a part of The European Poetry Festival 2023, a lecture by Ilya Kaminsky commissioned by the University of Liverpool Centre for New and International Writing and The Poetry Society, as well as a book, a film, a magazine and photography / poetry diptychs in Liverpool’s public realm. 

Public realm. Home diptychs

Six Ukrainian photographers tell their stories about home through images. Six UK poets, representing the UK nations and Liverpool, respond with a short poem. These diptychs will be situated at the train stations, ferry terminals and the University of Liverpool.

The photographers: Maryna Frolova, Alexander Chekmenev, Igor Chekachkov, Polina Polikarpova, Yaroslav Solop, Mykhaylo Palinchak.

The poets: Deryn Rees-Jones, Jackie Kay, James Conor Patterson, John Hegley, Hanan Issa, Roger McGough, curated by the National Poetry Library.

Home diptychs are produced in partnership with the National Poetry Library.

The Liverpool Camarade (part of The European Poetry Festival 2023)

11 May 2023, 7.30pm, Open Eye Gallery

Details and free tickets booking: eventbrite.co.uk

A remarkable poetry event in support of Ukrainian culture, celebrating liveness, collaboration and cross-linguistic collective inventiveness.

Kārlis Vērdiņš and James Byrne

Hanna Komar and Michael Sutton

Katerina Koulouri and Patricia Farrell

Yasmin Hafedh and Sarah Dawson

Ailsa Holland and Stephen Sunderland

Robert Sheppard and Sarah-Claire Conlon

Tom Jenks and SJ Fowler

Stanimir Dimitrov and Michael Egan.

Poetry in a Time of Crisis. Ilya Kaminsky lecture

15 May 2023, 7.30pm, The Tung Auditorium

Details and free tickets booking: thetungauditorium.com.

The event combines an exciting new lecture, poems and an in conversation led by Professor Sandeep Parmar), followed by audience Q&A. Kaminsky’s lecture explores poetry in a time of crisis. Focusing on poets from Ukraine, and including examples from many of the poets writing out of the current conflict, Kaminsky will also draw on a wider historical context as well as poems that touch on contemporary crisis in the West. The event will include a selection of poems from the anthology of poetry from Ukraine as well as some of Kaminsky’s own work.

Commissioned jointly by the University of Liverpool Centre for New and International Writing and The Poetry Society, this event is the 2023 Allott Lecture / Poetry Society Annual Lecture.

Poetry-writing workshops

11 – 16 May 2023, Prescot, Sefton and Belle Vale

Open Eye Gallery is working with Liverpool Poetry Space and the Windows Project to deliver six poetry-writing workshops for elderly residents of the Liverpool region focused on the theme of ‘Home’. The workshops will be led by Judy Mazonowicz and Michelle Sakim of the Windows Project, and delivered throughout May at the Watch Factory in Prescot, Age Concern in Sefton and Active Community Enterprise, Belle Vale. Participants will respond to images by Ukrainian photographers focused on identity and culture, producing new writing which will be published as a book and later showcased digitally at the gallery. 

For further information about the community workshops contact The Windows Project (0771 064 4325).

At Home: special edition of Open Eye Gallery’s in-house magazine TILT

The magazine, produced in partnership with the Centre for New and International Writing, University of Liverpool, shows photographs by contemporary Ukrainian photographers and poems and essays created in response to them. Speaking about producing the zine, Deryn Rees-Jones, Co-Director of the Centre for New and International Writing, said: “The work featured here is by current and former students of Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool, and one poet whose work is published by Pavilion Poetry. All the writers, who are at different stages of their lives and careers, have had a chance to reflect, in poetry or prose, on what home means, using the photographs as a bridge to their own memory and imagination. The very best writing comes from a place of radical empathy: an ability to identify but also to address one’s own assumptions and beliefs. Working on the zine has given us all an important opportunity to reflect on the war in Ukraine and its devastating impact on the daily lives Ukrainians”.

Contributing writers: Deryn Rees-Jones, Oleksandra Pron, Bernadette McBride, Pauline Rowe, Sarah Hymas, Saul Leslie, David Tierney, Anita Pati, Max Gorbatskyi, Viktoria Bavykina.

At Home magazine will be available to buy at Open Eye Gallery.

Film and book

Ukrainian curators and photographers and UK poets are talking about home and what it means to them in Home From Home film produced by Hurricane Films and Arthouse Traffic Films. The book Home includes photographs and commissioned poems, the exhibition views, and essays on the topic of home. The book and the film will be available at Open Eye Gallery’s new exhibition of contemporary Ukrainian photography Home. Perspectives, opening 4 May 2023.

Poetry programme is produced in partnership with the Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library, the University of Liverpool Centre for New and International Writing, The Poetry Society, European Poetry Festival, Liverpool Poetry Space and The Windows Project.

HOME is commissioned by Culture Liverpool / Liverpool City Council, with kind support from EuroFestival and Arts Council England. 

Image credit: Evgeniy Pavlov, from the Total Photography series, 1992

The Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library is the largest public collection of modern poetry in the world and is housed at the Southbank Centre in London. Founded by the Arts Council in 1953 and opened by poets T.S. Eliot and Herbert Read, the library contains over 200,000 items spanning from 1912 to the present day, extensive resources for poets, academics, schools and families. Hosting exhibitions and events, as well as offering an extensive catalogue and ebook service accessible online, the library is free to use.

European Poetry Festival is one of the grandest celebrations of European poetry ever to take place in the UK. Eleven events over three weeks will see over one hundred poets from across the continent and the UK come together. 

The Centre for New and International Writing is the University of Liverpool’s focal point for the study of contemporary and international literatures, for creative writing, and new writing in its many manifestations.

The Poetry Society is one of Britain’s most dynamic arts organisations, representing British poetry both nationally and internationally. Today it has more than 5,000 members worldwide and publishes the UK’s leading poetry magazine, The Poetry Review, which has been published since 1912.

Liverpool Poetry Space is a collective in Liverpool and the city region of poetry organisations and people who are passionate about poetry as an art form and its potential to transform the lives of everyone who has the opportunity to interact with it.

The Windows Project was created in 1976 by poets and writers, in order to introduce marginalised groups to the power of language as a creative tool and registered as a charity in 1981. It supports writers across Merseyside with free professional advice for script-writers, storytellers, poets and more.