Please join us to celebrate the launch of Here on Earth by Jeffrey Wainwright. Hosting the reading will be John McAuliffe. The event will feature readings and discussion, and audience members will have the opportunity to ask their own questions. We will show the text during readings so that you can read along.

Register here and let us know you can make it by joining the Facebook event https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AjH_IvW0TcSFd0aubKe-fg

We are still here on earth, and with a troubled sense of wonder Jeffrey Wainwright’s new collection acknowledges life’s sufficiency. The poems evoke Ruskin as writer and artist, his insistence on precision, the thing seen in fullness rather than the seer, the object rather than the subject in the foreground. Ruskin: ‘the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills’.

The poet addresses old friends, with whom he’s grown up and then old. He engages them in meditations which include their past, the worlds in which they were taking shape – a shape that is now them, old men rich in language and in heart. They have not lost direction but fare forward, eyes focused on what’s there.

These are not ‘the other poem’ which goes too far. ‘The sea is close by/as it says in the other poem-/but here it is really true.’ The poet in small things, in the indefinite article, finds a pattern; he still looks for the plan, if there is one, which he cannot quite give up believing in. Here on Earth ends with a poem on his father’s experience of growing old, and a ‘Seascape from Holly’s Photograph’: Holly, his daughter, in Australia, another world to which he has entry, but only as a visitor. Time foreshortens prospects, but while there’s breath, eyesight, language and imagination, there is also conscience, fear, thought, and – still – desire. We are at a beginning.

Registration for this online event will cost £2, later redeemable against the cost of the book. All attendees will receive the discount code and how to purchase the book during and after event.

Please note that there is a limited number of places for the reading, so do book early to avoid disappointment. You should receive a confirmation email with details on how to join after you register. If this does not arrive, please contact us to let us know. Please also be aware that clicking ‘attending’ on the Facebook event will not guarantee your place – you must complete the Zoom registration here https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AjH_IvW0TcSFd0aubKe-fg

About the speakers:

Jeffrey Wainwright was born in Stoke-on-Trent, educated locally and at Leeds University where he benefited from the poetry scene sustained by Jon Silkin, Ken Smith, Geoffrey Hill and others. He taught for many years at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has also translated drama (from French) and his critical prose includes Poetry the Basics and Acceptable Words: Essays on the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill. This is his ninth volume of poetry, all published by Carcanet. He lives with his wife in Manchester and for parts of the year in Umbria and New South Wales.

John McAuliffe grew up in County Kerry, Ireland. The Gallery Press has published his five poetry collections, including A Better Life (2002) which was shortlisted for a Forward Prize. He teaches poetry at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing.