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Manchester Multilingual City Poets
Manchester City of Literature projectThe Manchester Multilingual City Poets are talented creatives who have been appointed to produce a series of original works on behalf of the City.
The City’s Multilingual City Poets act as ambassadors for Manchester’s residents, communities, and literature organisations showing the dedication to the importance of literature at a civic level.
The launch of the Multilingual City Poets took place in 2022 at Manchester Poetry Library on International Mother Language Day and included an address from Councillor Luthfur Rahman, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council at the time, readings from the inaugural three Multilingual City Poets, as well as music from Pringle Gulzar, a tabla player based in Oldham guided by faith and celebrating South Asian culture.
Who are the Manchester Multilingual City Poets?
Manchester celebrated International Mother Language Day 2025 with two newly appointed Multilingual City Poets, Charlotte Shevchenko Knight and Nóra Blascsók. The two poets will be in post for a year, working on commissions from the Manchester City of Literature local and international networks.
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight is a poet of both British and Ukrainian heritage. Her debut collection Food for the Dead, published by Jonathan Cape in 2024, was a winner of an Eric Gregory Award (2023) and the Laurel Prize for Best First Collection UK (2024).
Nóra Blascsók is a Hungarian poet based in Manchester. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies including Magma, The Rialto, Perverse, Shearsman and Bath Magg among others. Her debut pamphlet ‘<body>of work</body>’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2022.
The City Poet roles carry a civic responsibility, much like conventional Poet Laureate designations, and the appointees are commissioned to produce original poems on behalf of the City. A few of the poems created as part of the project are showcased below. The formats of these commissions vary, sometimes poetry films, written pieces, performances or other.
Commissioned poems have responded to the likes of Festival of Libraries, Manchester Day and World Poetry Day plus other exciting public events, projects and community outreach programmes coordinated by Manchester City of Literature and its partnership network.
Each poet translates the other poets’ writing each time a new poem is written, so all the poems and poetry films are available in a variety of languages.
More project information:
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