The Desert Cafe No2 Poetry Reading Series

  • DATE

    2 March 2023

  • TIME

    8:30 pm to 12:00 am

  • PRICE

    Free

  • VENUE

    Corbieres
    2 Half Moon St, Manchester, M2 7PB

  • THEME

    Poetry

  • ORGANISER

    Death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

We will be celebrating the release of DIALOGUES OF A by Rosie Roberts (2022), who will reading from her new collection. There will also be readings by Bonnie Hancell, Sally Barrett and Claudina Domingo & Ryan Greene.

Dialogues of A torques time, observing conversations from infancy to adulthood weaving through adolescent memories and childhood premonitions. From lockdown in Glasgow’s Southside, undertaking pregnancy, birth and birthwork in an exhausted and underfunded NHS, to living in an extremely complex family unit—anxieties about the neo-liberal gentrification and commodification of place, relationships, mind and body came to dominate Rosie Roberts’ psyche and poetics at the time of writing. Rosie Roberts is an artist, writer and editor from Glasgow generally working collaboratively through ideas of synchronicity, time, locality and affect.

Ryan Greene has personally worked with Claudina Domingo to translate from Spanish, Horas imposibles // Impossible Hours, a selection of poems from her full-length publication Tránsito (Transit): a kaleidoscopic collection of densely-packed poems rooted in the landscape, language, and history of what we now call Mexico City. Domingo layers explorations of catastrophe (the 16th century genocidal Spanish conquest, the 1968 Tlatelolco student massacre, the 1985 earthquake, etc.) with the dizzying swirl of present-day urban life. Claudina will be reading over microphone from Meixco City and Ryan Greene from Phoenix to a small bar in Manchester, fusing together total darkness, Spanish, English, experimenting with the possibilities of translation, which can be a poetic medium in its own right.

Sally Barrett has had three pamphlets published by Red Cielings Press and Some Roast Poet (2021). She identifies as Northern and enjoys her job, as well as writing poetry.

Bonnie uses creative mediums as a coping strategy and form of therapy for ongoing battles with mental illness. Her work focuses on queer counter cultures, internet sub-cultures, sickness, survival, cruising, kink and rediscovering ideas of sacred or divine. She has a chapbook ‘in the stupid stupid present where I was living’ published by Gong Farm, 2022.

Join us at Corbieres, Half Moon Street in Manchester on the 2nd March!