Fiction & Poetry Evening
Tuesday 27 March 2007 @ 8pm
Hisham Matar and André Mangeot
with music from Andrea Cockerton
www.michaelhouse.org.uk
Michaelhouse Café, Trinity St, Cambridge CB2 1SU, 01223 309167
Tickets £5 / £4 (tickets on the door)
Hisham Matar was born in New York City in 1970 to Libyan parents and spent his childhood first in Tripoli, then in Cairo. He has lived in London since 1986.
His first novel, IN THE COUNTRY OF MEN (Viking, 2006), was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and The Guardian First Book Award and translated into 22 languages. Hisham’s essays have appeared in The Independent and The Guardian. He is currently working on his second novel.
Hisham was a loyal supporter of the CB1 Café reading series in its early days and gave several memorable readings of his poetry there in the late 1990’s. We are delighted to welcome him back to Cambridge for his first reading here since his Booker shortlisting.
'Glowing with emotional truth… Extraordinary… One of the most brilliant literary debuts of recent years.' The Times
André Mangeot lives and works in Cambridge. His two poetry collections to date are Natural Causes (Shoestring, 2003) and Mixer (Egg Box, 2005). He was runner-up in the 2006 Wigtown/Scottish National poetry competition and is also a member of the performance group, The Joy of Six. The recent recipient of an Arts Council ‘Escalator’ award, he is currently writing a novel set in Romania.
Hisham and André will be reading from their novels, as well as related poems, during the evening.
Andrea Cockerton, a local musician with an exceptional voice, is based just outside Cambridge. She is influenced by a mixture of choral, acoustic, dance music and plainsong. Formerly a chorister at Trinity College Cambridge and a classically trained pianist under Margie Todd, Andrea now devotes her time to writing songs, acoustic sets and, soon, dj-ing…
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
Launch of Seam Magazine’s latest issue: Tuesday 27th February
Readings from contributors to the latest issue of Seam: Frank Dullaghan,
Daniel Healy, Stuart Henson, Martin Figura and Helen Ivory. Introduced by Anne Berkeley.
8pm in CB1 Cafe, Mill Road.
Entrance £3 / £2 concessions.
Frank Dullaghan is Consulting Editor of Seam. He has been widely published in magazines including The Honest Ulsterman, London Magazine, Magma, The New Welsh Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Printer's Devil, Quadrant (Australia), Reactions, The Rialto, The Shop, Smiths Knoll, Thumbscrew, Verse. His first collection is due from Cinnamon Press. He works in Dubai.
A Walk in a Field
For Thomas
I remember you telling it -
home from the Leb, wife in the other room -
how your friend stepped on a mine,
how he froze, knowing not to move,
his scarecrow shadow stretching
while you followed your footprints back
to gather rocks, piled them round his feet
adding pressure, back and forth,
each placed gently like gifts for a king
until the second click gave warning -
seconds to move: sprinting, shouting,
diving as the ground ripped open,
the world folding over you, raining.
Frank Dullaghan
* * *
Martin Figura is a photographer. His second collection Ahem (Eggbox) was published in 2005. He has just completed an MA in Writing The Visual at Norwich School of Art and Design.
Silesia
A wife and three children; then
you can visit. It's twenty years
and there are still bomb holes
in the road. You bring back
Polish crystal for the cabinet,
brass inlaid wooden boxes, tankards
carved out of coal, a thousand
photographs; one of a fallen horse
being flogged, not making a sound.
Martin Figura
(from Seam 26)
* * *
Daniel Healy was born in 1972 in Wales. He lives in Cambridge. He's had
poems published in a variety of magazines: The Journal, HQ, Chimera, The Rialto, Envoi, etc. He works in a bookshop.
Thaw
Black ice
in white snow
uncovered in the rain
unable to stop
the gaze returning
to that jagged line
of footprints
tracing the way.
Daniel Healy
(from Seam 26)
* * *
Stuart Henson is widely published. A selection of his work appeared in
Oxford Poets 2002 (Carcanet). His most recent collection is A Place Apart (Shoestring 2004).
Theatre of the Absurd
The cushions have begun to multiply like fungi,
propagating quietly there on the sofa, against
the backs of chairs, the chaise, the ottoman -
The rugs lay traps. In the bathroom, a tap drips
insidiously, the shower lies to him that hot is cold.
At night the fridge groans with its heavy breathing,
the curtains open and close at the moon's whim.
Mirrors have started to conduct interrogations.
All he can do is laugh like a maniac and trim his nails,
write finely worded letters on the backs of bills.
The paintwork crackles like a glacier and when
it rains a yellow stain spreads down the walls.
The telephone withholds his number when he calls himself.
Outside, white bottles pile against his door
like graveyard skulls.
Stuart Henson
(from Seam 26)
* * *
Helen Ivory's second Bloodaxe collection, The Dog in the Sky, was published last year. She is Academic Director and teacher of Creative Writing for Continuing Education at UEA.
Shelter
A grid of windows
rises up to be counted
above the frozen street.
Rooms like empty boxes
wait for a heartbeat
to shiver inside them.
The woman in the bus shelter
waits, and is waitng.
Helen Ivory
(from The Dog in the Sky, Bloodaxe 2006)
Daniel Healy, Stuart Henson, Martin Figura and Helen Ivory. Introduced by Anne Berkeley.
8pm in CB1 Cafe, Mill Road.
Entrance £3 / £2 concessions.
Frank Dullaghan is Consulting Editor of Seam. He has been widely published in magazines including The Honest Ulsterman, London Magazine, Magma, The New Welsh Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Printer's Devil, Quadrant (Australia), Reactions, The Rialto, The Shop, Smiths Knoll, Thumbscrew, Verse. His first collection is due from Cinnamon Press. He works in Dubai.
A Walk in a Field
For Thomas
I remember you telling it -
home from the Leb, wife in the other room -
how your friend stepped on a mine,
how he froze, knowing not to move,
his scarecrow shadow stretching
while you followed your footprints back
to gather rocks, piled them round his feet
adding pressure, back and forth,
each placed gently like gifts for a king
until the second click gave warning -
seconds to move: sprinting, shouting,
diving as the ground ripped open,
the world folding over you, raining.
Frank Dullaghan
* * *
Martin Figura is a photographer. His second collection Ahem (Eggbox) was published in 2005. He has just completed an MA in Writing The Visual at Norwich School of Art and Design.
Silesia
A wife and three children; then
you can visit. It's twenty years
and there are still bomb holes
in the road. You bring back
Polish crystal for the cabinet,
brass inlaid wooden boxes, tankards
carved out of coal, a thousand
photographs; one of a fallen horse
being flogged, not making a sound.
Martin Figura
(from Seam 26)
* * *
Daniel Healy was born in 1972 in Wales. He lives in Cambridge. He's had
poems published in a variety of magazines: The Journal, HQ, Chimera, The Rialto, Envoi, etc. He works in a bookshop.
Thaw
Black ice
in white snow
uncovered in the rain
unable to stop
the gaze returning
to that jagged line
of footprints
tracing the way.
Daniel Healy
(from Seam 26)
* * *
Stuart Henson is widely published. A selection of his work appeared in
Oxford Poets 2002 (Carcanet). His most recent collection is A Place Apart (Shoestring 2004).
Theatre of the Absurd
The cushions have begun to multiply like fungi,
propagating quietly there on the sofa, against
the backs of chairs, the chaise, the ottoman -
The rugs lay traps. In the bathroom, a tap drips
insidiously, the shower lies to him that hot is cold.
At night the fridge groans with its heavy breathing,
the curtains open and close at the moon's whim.
Mirrors have started to conduct interrogations.
All he can do is laugh like a maniac and trim his nails,
write finely worded letters on the backs of bills.
The paintwork crackles like a glacier and when
it rains a yellow stain spreads down the walls.
The telephone withholds his number when he calls himself.
Outside, white bottles pile against his door
like graveyard skulls.
Stuart Henson
(from Seam 26)
* * *
Helen Ivory's second Bloodaxe collection, The Dog in the Sky, was published last year. She is Academic Director and teacher of Creative Writing for Continuing Education at UEA.
Shelter
A grid of windows
rises up to be counted
above the frozen street.
Rooms like empty boxes
wait for a heartbeat
to shiver inside them.
The woman in the bus shelter
waits, and is waitng.
Helen Ivory
(from The Dog in the Sky, Bloodaxe 2006)
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