Archive for August, 2011
Your Favourite Poems
9 months ago
Tuesday 11th October
12pm – 2pm/ Free
Festival Bookshop, Library Foyer,
Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
Come and share your favourite poem in the Festival Bookshop! You will also be able to find out about our other events, buy books, mugs, bags and more or take the Bodies in The Library tour.
This event is part of the Fringe Festival.
Presented in Partnership with Birmingham Libraries.
Tickets: Free, just drop in.
Nine Arches Press & Flarestack Poets at Ikon Bookshop
9 months ago
Wednesday 12th October
3pm – 4pm/ Free
Bookshop, Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square,
Birmingham, B1 2HS
Meet the editors behind two of the region’s best known independent presses: Flarestack Poets and Nine Arches Press, while exploring Ikon’s bookshop.
This event is part of the Fringe Festival.
Presented in Partnership with Birmingham Libraries
Tickets: Free, just drop in
Moving Books
9 months ago
Friday 14th October
1pm – 6pm/ Free
Festival Bookshop, Library Foyer,
Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
Thousands of books will be moved into the New Library of Birmingham- which book would you most like to see there? Come and share your thoughts.
This event is part of the Fringe Festival.
Presented in Partnership with Birmingham Libraries
Tickets: Free, just drop in
Launching a new Festival and a new Poet Laureate!
9 months ago
Thursday 6th October
6pm – 8.30pm/ Free (Quiz £2)
Yumm Cafe, The Custard Factory,
Gibb Street, Birmingham, B9 4AA
Join the Festival and partners Birmingham Libraries and Poetry On Loan to launch the city’s literature festival.
Back for our 13th year, the Birmingham Book Festival is sharing an opening night with National Poetry Day 2011. What better excuse to invite one of our most exciting poets, Matt Harvey, to help us launch the Festival and test your literary knowledge with the return of the (now infamous) Festival Quiz – back by popular demand. We will also be announcing the city’s 16th Poet Laureate -live!
The Birmingham Poet Laureate scheme is founded and managed by Birmingham Libraries, it supports both an adult laureate and a young laureate for a year, connecting them with the writing community in Birmingham and helping them to generate opportunities for themselves and for others. The outgoing Laureate, Roy McFarlane, will perform alongside the winner, handing over the honorary title with a few words about his 2010-11 tenure.
There will be words from the Festival team, too, about what you can expect from the next ten days. We hope you can join us to welcome in this year’s season of writing, reading and thinking in Birmingham.
All of this takes place within the cosy den that is Yumm Café. Beer, wine, nibbles and soft drinks will be available.
Tickets: Free but please book to avoid
disappointment through our Box Office.
Book Online or call our Box Office (via the MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
If you wish to enter a quiz team or join one, please email joanne[at]birminghambookfestival.org. There is a £2 charge to enter. You can join on the night too.
The Fringe Festival
If you are around the city during the day on Thursday 6th October, look out for us as we head to various venues across the city centre with the Birmingham Poet Laureate finalists who will be performing some of their poetry from 2pm – 4pm.
The schedule of venues includes (timings are subject to alteration):
2pm: Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham, B1 2HS
2.30pm: Festival Bookshop, Library Foyer, Central Library, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
3pm: St Martin’s Church, Bullring
3.30pm: Cafe Blend, Orion Building, 90 Navigation Street, Birmingham, B5 4AA
The Fringe Festival is presented in Partnership with Birmingham Libraries.
For more information about Birmingham Libraries, please visit their website http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/libraries
Too Asian, Not Asian Enough: The New Anthology from Tindal Street Press
9 months ago
Friday 7th October
6.00 (for a 6.30pm start) – 7.30pm/ Free
Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square,
Brindleyplace, Birmingham, B1 2HS
‘For too long we’ve been expected to reproduce the formulas of British Asian fiction while anything else we write is considered too Asian or not Asian enough. We reject the British Asian label and demand the freedom to be writers rather than a marketing category.’ – editor, Kavita Bhanot
For this Tindal Street Press launch Kavita will be joined by three of the exciting new writers in Too Asian, Not Asian Enough – Bobby Nayyar, Rohan Kar and Dimmi Khan – who will be reading from their stories and discussing the motivations behind this thrilling collection of up-and-coming British Asian talent.
Presented in Partnership with Tindal Street Press
Tickets: free, but please book to avoid disappointment
Book online or call the Box Office (via MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
Ian Leslie: Born Liars
9 months ago
Friday 7th October
8pm – 9.15pm/ £7 (£5 concessions)
Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham, B1 2HS
Our attitudes to lying are confused and contradictory – you might even say, self-deceiving. On the one hand we hate lies, and liars. On the other, we all indulge in fibs, tall tales and fantasies. If lying is wrong, why do we all do it, both to others, and to ourselves?
In Born Liars, Ian Leslie argues that, far from being a bug in the human software, lying is central to who we are; that we cannot understand ourselves without first understanding the dynamics of deceit. Using a vivid, panoramic style, he explores the role of deception and self-deception in our childhoods, our careers, and our health, and the part played by lies – both black and white – in art, advertising, sport, politics and war. Drawing on thinkers as varied as Augustine, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Ian McEwan and Marlon Brando, he takes the reader on an exhilarating tour of ideas that brings the latest news about deception back from the frontiers of evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy.
Join Ian Leslie as he presents Born Liars. This event includes a book signing, copies of the book will be on sale.
Presented in partnership with the RSA
Tickets: £7 (£5 concessionary price)
Book Online or through our Box Office (via the MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
Slam! Young People Set the Mic Alight!
9 months ago
Saturday 8th October
4pm – 5pm/ Free
Library Theatre, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
Young poets who are involved with RoguePlay’s regular Rhymes night mentor young writers from the West Midlands to battle it out in a poetry slam.
With Becki Head, Kesha Campbell and Jordan Westcarr. The afternoon will be compared by former Birmingham Young Poet Laureate Matt Windle.
Rhymes is a regular performance poetry/spoken word event that hosts established and upcoming local talent. We’ve teamed up with them to link up some of their best young poets with regional young writers who are keen to hone their slamming skills. Throughout the afternoon our poets will mentor the budding slammers as well as performing their own sets, culminating in a performance and slam where the public can vote for their favourite team.
Tickets: Free but please reserve your place through our Box Office
Book online or call the Box Office (via MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
Sparkbrook Pride: Launching a new collection from Pogus Caesar
9 months ago
Monday 10th October
6.30pm – 8pm/ Free
MADE (Midlands Architecture and the Designed Environment),
7 Newhall Square, Birmingham,
B3 1RU
Sparkbrook Pride consists of 70 black and white photographs of residents of Sparkbrook, Birmingham – where Pogus grew up – all taken with his trademark Canon Sureshot camera. Documenting the diverse individuals who live and work in the area, the book features both the long-standing residents from the West Indies, Ireland, India and Pakistan and the more recent additions to the community from Somalia, Sudan, Malawi and Afghanistan, celebrating the rich cultural mix that defines the area.
The book’s foreword is written by award winning poet, novelist and playwright Benjamin Zephaniah. Zephaniah says “I love the ‘rawness’ of these photos, they have a sense of place, yet nothing is staged, and the only information Pogus gives us about those featured is how they define themselves, nothing more. We need no more. So people – it is down to us to piece together the rest of this multicultural puzzle”.
Pogus Caesar is one of the country’s leading social documentary photographers. He has recorded key moments in Birmingham’s recent history including the Bullring regeneration, Birmingham tornado and the Handsworth riots. According to Caesar “Simplicity is best when working with diverse communities; I prefer to photograph the changing world as it unfolds around me”.
Specially commissioned by Be Birmingham and published by OOM Gallery and Punch
Tickets: Free, but please book to avoid disappointment
Book online or by calling the Box Office (via MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
Developing Writers with the BBC- with Paul Ashton
9 months ago
Monday 10th October
6pm – 7.30pm/ £7 (£5)
Library Theatre, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3HQ
How do scriptwriters get themselves noticed? How do they then get themselves developed and commissioned? And how do things really work at the BBC for new, emerging and even experienced writers?
Demystifying the process will be Paul Ashton, Development Producer at BBC Writersroom whose job it is to find and nurture writers for BBC drama, comedy and children’s programmes. He recently published The Calling Card Script, a book designed for anyone wanting to write an original script that speaks their voice and gets them noticed.
Presented in Partnership with the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain
Tickets: £7/ £5 concessionary price. Writers’ Guild Member: £4
Book online or through our Box Office (via MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
W.G Sebald: Beyond Literature with Uwe Schutte & Jo Catling
9 months ago
Monday 10th October
8pm – 9.15pm/ £6 (£4)
Library Theatre, Chamberlain Square,
Birmingham, B3 3HQ
In the course of just a few years W.G. Sebald established an international reputation for himself as one of the most renowned writers of the late 20th century. This year marks the tenth anniversary of his premature death in December 2001. In Beyond Literature, Jo Catling and Uwe Schütte will examine aspects of his life and works that are hardly known: his role as an academic in the UK, his critical writings, his reception as a writer in Germany, and so on.
Jo Catling is a former colleague of Sebald at the University of East Anglia, translator of his critical writings and co-editor of Saturn’s Moons: A WG Sebald Handbook (2011) which was also co-edited by Richard Hibbitt.
Uwe Schütte is a former PhD student of Sebald and Reader in German at Aston University
Tickets: £6/ £4 concessionary price
Book Onlineor call the Box Office (via MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
