Four Poets
Thursday 24 October / 6 – 8 pm / Open Eye Gallery / free, drop in
LiPS (Liverpool Poetry Space) presents Four Liverpool-based poets at Open Eye Gallery – come along to this free event to discover the range of voices and dynamic approaches to poetry which pervade the current Merseyside scene.
Maria Isakova-Bennett: Maria has five pamphlets: an o an x and Painting the Mersey in 17 Canvases (Hazel Press, 2023 and 2022); Caveat (Poetry Bus, 2015); All of the Spaces (Eyewear, 2017); …an ache in each welcoming kiss (Maytree, 2019). In 2020 she created an artwork and pamphlet, mira, with poet John Glenday. Maria founded the hand-stitched poetry project, Coast to Coast to Coast, working with writers in the UK and Ireland. Since 2017, she has stitched over 1200 journals as 24 editions. In 2018, Maria was artist and writer-in-residence at Poetry in Aldeburgh (Map Line and Stitch). She is the recipient of the Peggy Poole Award and a New North Poet Award. Maria works as writer-in-residence for The Life Rooms, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.
Mandy Coe: Mandy Coe is the author of seven books. She writes for adults and children. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC television and radio programmes such as CBeebies, Woman’s Hour and Poetry Please. She was the winner of the inaugural Manchester Poetry Prize. Her latest collection for adults is There Will be Cherries (Shoestring Press, 2016), and Belonging Street (Otter Barry Books, 2020), her latest collection for children, was selected as one of the Independent’s top ten poetry books.
Eleanor Rees: Eleanor has published five collections of poetry, Tam Lin of the Winter Park (Guillemot Press, 2022), The Well at Winter Solstice (Salt, 2019), Blood Child (Pavilion, 2015), Eliza and the Bear (Salt, 2009), and Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Selections of Eleanor’s poems have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Lithuanian, Slovak and Romanian. (Versopolis, 2016, 2019, 2024). She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, an Irish Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award and a Northern Writers’ Award. She is a Senior Lecturer in creative writing at Liverpool Hope University in the School of Humanities.
Robert Sheppard: Robert’s recent books include three volumes of transpositions of traditional English sonnets, The English Strain (Shearsman, 2021), Bad Idea (KFS, 2021) and British Standards (Shearsman, 2024) – though they are really about Brexit – and a meditation on authorship, Doubly Stolen Fire (Aquifer, 2023). Shearsman also published his selected poems and a book of essays on his work. He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University (Ormskirk) and he helped run the Liverpool poetry reading series, Storm and Golden Sky. A critic of what is sometimes called ‘linguistically innovative poetry’, he also co-edited New Collected Poems by Lee Harwood.
LiPS (Liverpool Poetry Space) is a partnership project of people and organisations in Liverpool and the city region, who have been working together since 2021. Established as a working group by Chris McCabe with the goal of creating a dedicated physical space for poetry in the city region, LiPS is currently working as part of the Windows Project to produce a reading series in 2024, and to develop new partnerships for our work.
Thursday 24 October / 6 – 8 pm / Open Eye Gallery / free, drop in
LiPS (Liverpool Poetry Space) presents Four Liverpool-based poets at Open Eye Gallery – come along to this free event to discover the range of voices and dynamic approaches to poetry which pervade the current Merseyside scene.
Maria Isakova-Bennett: Maria has five pamphlets: an o an x and Painting the Mersey in 17 Canvases (Hazel Press, 2023 and 2022); Caveat (Poetry Bus, 2015); All of the Spaces (Eyewear, 2017); …an ache in each welcoming kiss (Maytree, 2019). In 2020 she created an artwork and pamphlet, mira, with poet John Glenday. Maria founded the hand-stitched poetry project, Coast to Coast to Coast, working with writers in the UK and Ireland. Since 2017, she has stitched over 1200 journals as 24 editions. In 2018, Maria was artist and writer-in-residence at Poetry in Aldeburgh (Map Line and Stitch). She is the recipient of the Peggy Poole Award and a New North Poet Award. Maria works as writer-in-residence for The Life Rooms, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust.
Mandy Coe: Mandy Coe is the author of seven books. She writes for adults and children. Her poetry has been broadcast on BBC television and radio programmes such as CBeebies, Woman’s Hour and Poetry Please. She was the winner of the inaugural Manchester Poetry Prize. Her latest collection for adults is There Will be Cherries (Shoestring Press, 2016), and Belonging Street (Otter Barry Books, 2020), her latest collection for children, was selected as one of the Independent’s top ten poetry books.
Eleanor Rees: Eleanor has published five collections of poetry, Tam Lin of the Winter Park (Guillemot Press, 2022), The Well at Winter Solstice (Salt, 2019), Blood Child (Pavilion, 2015), Eliza and the Bear (Salt, 2009), and Andraste’s Hair (Salt, 2007), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Selections of Eleanor’s poems have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Lithuanian, Slovak and Romanian. (Versopolis, 2016, 2019, 2024). She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, an Irish Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award and a Northern Writers’ Award. She is a Senior Lecturer in creative writing at Liverpool Hope University in the School of Humanities.
Robert Sheppard: Robert’s recent books include three volumes of transpositions of traditional English sonnets, The English Strain (Shearsman, 2021), Bad Idea (KFS, 2021) and British Standards (Shearsman, 2024) – though they are really about Brexit – and a meditation on authorship, Doubly Stolen Fire (Aquifer, 2023). Shearsman also published his selected poems and a book of essays on his work. He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill University (Ormskirk) and he helped run the Liverpool poetry reading series, Storm and Golden Sky. A critic of what is sometimes called ‘linguistically innovative poetry’, he also co-edited New Collected Poems by Lee Harwood.
LiPS (Liverpool Poetry Space) is a partnership project of people and organisations in Liverpool and the city region, who have been working together since 2021. Established as a working group by Chris McCabe with the goal of creating a dedicated physical space for poetry in the city region, LiPS is currently working as part of the Windows Project to produce a reading series in 2024, and to develop new partnerships for our work.
