Smokestacks and Culture Matters: a night of working class poetry, with Amir Darwish, Owen Gallagher, Nick Moss, Caroline Maldonado and Peter Raynard.
Poets from the floor welcome.
Amir Darwish is a British Syrian poet & writer of Kurdish origin who lives in London. Born in Aleppo in 1979, he came to Britain as an asylum seeker in 2003.
Owen Gallagher's current collection is: 'Clydebuilt,' Smokestack Books.
Nick Moss is an ex-con poet whose book "Swear Down" came out via Smokestack and whose new work "Shooting to Kill" is out via Culture Matters later this year. Will dance and sing for alcohol.
Caroline Maldonado has four Smokestack publications (2013-2022) including poetry translated from Italian.
Peter Raynard's latest publication is, ‘The Harlot and the Rake: poems after William Hogarth’ published by Culture Matters
Smokestack aims to keep open a space for what is left of the English radical poetic tradition in the twenty-first century. Smokestack champions poets who are unfashionable, radical, left-field and working a long way from the metropolitan centres of cultural authority. Smokestack is interested in the World as well as the Word; believes that poetry is a part of and not apart from society; argues that if poetry does not belong to everyone it is not poetry.
Culture Matters Cultural activities and experiences can promote awareness, arouse indignation, inspire creativity and imagination, create a sense of equality, community and social justice. They can help us in the 'mental fight' to build Blake's new Jerusalem, a more democratic, equal, socialist society – not only in England but across the globe.
