Start time: 19:00
Venue: Number 70 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 5NH
Entry:£0 - FREE but booking essential
Contact: writingschool@mmu.ac.uk
Website: https://upthecreek2017.eventbrite.com

The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met is delighted to present this special event to launch Nikolai Duffy’s latest poetry collection, Up The Creek, published by Knives Forks and Spoons Press and Ian Seed’s short story pamphlet, Italian Lessons, published by Like This Press.

Up The Creek is a book about what happens when all the paddles have been sold to offshore investment funds.

There are stories and poems about politics, puns, administration, bureaucracy, debt, advertising, self-diagnosis, self-medication, education, celebrity, managerialism, business, capitalism, militancy, migration, ornamentation, insurance scams, scams in general, success, great wealth, inequality, occupational psychology, mishaps, casual embarrassments, falling in love, going to the toilet, social justice, commodification, fear, smart phones, social media, global finance, folly, ambivalence, and the enduring power of two fingers.

‘In these stories and poems, we never know what we shall across around the next corner, but the desire to turn the page and find out is irresistible. In the end, we may indeed be left ‘up the creek’, but the place we find ourselves in is ultimately one of liberation, and the people and objects we meet a cause for the celebration of the richness of life.' Ian Seed

Italian Lessons is the story of a young Englishman’s first weeks of living, working and falling in love in a foreign country. It charts an adventure into a new language and a different way of seeing the world. Permeated with bittersweet lyricism, Italian Lessons draws us into an atmosphere which is at once neorealist and yet hauntingly dreamlike. It is a story whose sights, scents and sounds will linger with us after the turning of the last page.

‘The mystery and sadness of empty rooms, chance encounters in the street, trains traveling through a landscape of snow become magical in Ian Seed's poems.' — John Ashbery, on Ian Seed’s Shifting Registers.

The event is free to attend, and all are welcome, but booking is essential.

http://knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/ 

https://likethispress.wordpress.com/