Virtual First Thursday | Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Jeremy Dixon

For our final First Thursday of the year we’re delighted to be joined by poets Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Jeremy Dixon. Tickets are £2 (plus admin fee), available through Eventbrite here www.eventbrite.co.uk.

Carolyn Jess-Cooke’s most recent collection We Have to Leave the Earth deftly interweaves the personal and the political. Climate change is confronted in a sequence about the Arctic; poems that are vividly descriptive of an extreme landscape, sensitive to the effects of global warming. A second sequence, The House of Rest, is a history in 9 poems of Josephine Butler, (1828-1906) a pioneering feminist activist. There are also tender poems about family.

Jeremy Dixon is a poet and book artist. His first full poetry collection A Voice Coming From Then (Arachne Press) unfurls from his teenage suicide attempt to encompass themes of bullying, queerphobia, acceptance and support. It also includes unexpected typography, collage, humour, magic, discotheques and frequent appearances by that Victorian demon, Spring-Heeled Jack. Content warning: some of the poems in the book deal with the themes and the language of physical and verbal bullying, swearing, queerphobia, queerphobic language, attempted suicide and suicide (however, for this reading Jeremy will select poems that are not so specific to these themes).

As usual, the main readings will be followed by our open mic. Readers are asked to prepare one A4 page of poetry or prose. Please email sarahjohnson@serenbooks.com to sign up. Festive themed pieces are welcomed but not compulsory!

Please note: Ticket sales will end at 7pm on Thursday 2nd December. The link will be sent to all attendees in an email from Eventbrite 25 minutes before the event. If you do not receive this email or have trouble getting into the event, please email sarahjohnson@serenbooks.com directly.

Captions will be provided by Otter.ai. The poems will also be shared on screen during the main readings.