‘It is beautiful, oh my god it is.’ To mark the 200th anniversary of Manchester Art Gallery, award-winning poet Jason Allen-Paisant has created a trio of exquisite, luxurious, sensual and playful poems inspired by paintings and garments in the gallery’s collection and recent Dandy Style exhibition. At this intimate event, Jason will perform his new poems for the first time and discuss fashion and style, identity and fluidity, and the Black male body and its presence with host Malika Booker. The poems were co-commissioned by Manchester Literature Festival and Manchester Art Gallery.

Jason is the author of Thinking With Trees, which won the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, and Self-Portrait as Othello, which has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023, and was described by Roger Robinson as ‘exhilarating’.