Date: Monday 14th January 2019

Time: 7pm – 9.30pm

Location: Royal Exchange Theatre, St Ann’s Square, Manchester M2 7DH

Tickets: £6 - £13 – Available at https://bookings.royalexchange.co.uk/single/PSDetail.aspx?psn=16538

The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met invites you to an evening of poetry and music in the Royal Exchange Studio, hosted by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

Following the unprecedented success of the past seasons, Carol Ann returns to host our hugely successful poetry readings. Joining Carol Ann are new writers from Manchester Met - including our House Poets John Fennelly and Mark Pajak - and a variety of special guests offering more evenings of jazz, poetry and conversation.

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.

Doors open at 7pm for music and drinks and the event starts at 7.30pm.

Monday 14th January 2019: The Glass Aisle - Paul Henry and Brian Briggs

The Glass Aisle is an astonishing collaboration between award-winning poet Paul Henry and singer-songwriter Brian Briggs (Stornoway); a long poem with songs set on a stretch of the Monmouthshire-Brecon canal. With its songs composed ‘out of the poem’, and brought to life in Brian Briggs’ clear tenor, this work breaks down the borders between the poem and the song lyric while offering a haunting elegy to the displaced. Two presences loom in the poem: Marconi, who conducted his experiments for radio on this particular part of the canal, and an old union workhouse, now converted into houses.Before their sell-out farewell tour last year, with Stornoway Brian Briggs played the main stages at Glastonbury, Isle Of Wight Festival, Green Man and various festivals across the world. Stornoway were the first ever unsigned band to appear on Later….With Jools Holland and had a Top 20 album with their last album, Bonxie. Award-winning poet, songwriter and BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3 presenter Paul Henry is author of ten books of verse, including The Glass Aisle published by Seren in 2018.

Carol Ann Duffy and Friends is presented by the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Exchange Theatre in partnership with Blackwell’s. Join the Manchester Writing School mailing list, contact writingschool@mmu.ac.uk, or follow us on Twitter @mcrwritingschl.