Thursday, 7 March 2019 at 7:00 pm – Thursday, 7 March 2019 at 8:30 pm

The People’s Poetry Lectures: Andrew McMillan

Date: Thursday 7th March 2019

Time: 7pm – 8.30pm

Location: The Director’s Suite, Principal Hotel, Manchester, M60 7HA

Tickets: £7/£5 – available at: https://buyonline.mmu.ac.uk/product-catalogue/arts-and-humanities/events/the-peoples-poetry-lectures-andrew-mcmillan-on-thom-gunn 

Carol Ann Duffy and the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University present The People’s Poetry Lectures: today’s leading writers talking about their favourite poets.

The third in our new series features Andrew McMillan on Thom Gunn: "The Weeping Wrestler: Toughness, Tenderness and Queerness in Thom Gunn’s poetry".

Andrew McMillan was born in South Yorkshire in 1988; his debut collection physical was the first ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award and a Northern Writers' award. It was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2015. physical has been translated into Norwegian and a bi-lingual French edition, Le Corps Des Hommes. His second collection, playtime, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018. He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Thom Gunn (1929-2004) was a British-born poet who resided in San Francisco for most of his life. His often erotic work touched on themes ranging from intimacy and sexuality to drugs and death. He published more than 30 books including Fighting Terms, Jack Straw's Castle, Touch, The Passages of Joy, To the Air, The Man with Night Sweats and Frontiers of Gossip, with a distinctive variety of regular and free forms. He also published Positives, a book of poems and photographs in collaboration with his brother Ander, and The Occasions of Poetry, a collection of his essays and introductions. He won the Levinson Prize, Rockefeller Award, W. H. Smith Award, David Cohen Award for Literature, PEN Prize for Poetry, and a MacArthur Fellowship and taught at the University of California at Berkeley. The Publishing Triangle's Triangle Award for Gay Poetry - which he won in 2001 for his collection Boss Cupid - was renamed the Thom Gunn Award in his memory following his death in 2004.

Join Andrew and Carol Ann in the relaxed setting of Manchester’s iconic Principal Hotel for an informal evening celebrating poetry.

The writers and researchers at Manchester Met, based in the Manchester Writing School, are always exploring two distinct paths within their work; how creative writing might serve as a mode of enquiry into the world and how such research might be disseminated outside of the academy in order for it to have the greatest impact. Our Writers at Manchester Met series allows us to interrogate the very best contemporary writing and continue to explore new ways in which it might reach wider audiences.

For more information, please contact:

James Draper · writingschool@mmu.ac.uk

Book Tickets

RAH! - Research in Arts and Humanities