In association with The Humber Mouth 2001
Venue: The Sailmakers Arms Pub, High Street

Thursday October 25th
8.00pm �5 (Conc �3) Tickets on the door

Galway Kinnell (USA)
With music by Tegwen Roberts

Galway Kinnell is one of America's most important poets. His 1982 Selected Poems won him the Pullitzer prize and the National Book Award. His poetry has always been marked by precise, furious intelligence, by devotion to the things and creatures of the world, and by transformations of every understanding into singing, universal art. He lives in Vermont and New York. This is a rare chance to hear him read in the UK.

"There are few others writing today in whose work we feel so strongly the full human presence" New York Times Book Review

Friday October 26th
8.00pm �4 (Conc �2.50) Tickets on the door

Dan Fante (USA)
With music by Matthew Hogg

Novelist and playwright Dan Fante's first novel Chump Change has received rare reviews in Europe and the United States. "Brutally compelling�raw, insightful, and deftly realized." Time Out (London).

His current novel Mooch has already received outstanding reviews and his forthcoming book of poetry A-GIN-PISSING -RAW-MEAT -DUAL-CARBURETOR-V8 -SON-OF-A-BITCH -FROM-LOS-ANGELES is scheduled to be released in England by Wrecking Ball Press this year.

Thursday November 8th
8.00pm �3 (Conc �2) Tickets on the door

John Robinson, Dai Parsons & Dean Wilson

John Robinson is a Hull poet launching his poetry collection The Cook's Wedding, published by Ragged Raven Press.

"It is clear that much of Robinson's work comes from, as he says, from local places and experience. But this leaves out the essential elements of imagination, and it should not, because imagination is what makes his work distinctive." (U.A.Fanthorpe).

Passionately and jubilantly Welsh, Dai Parson is a poet of inventive wit, intent on the exploration of the distinctly dark. Well known in certain choice circles for his warm and generously surreal readings, imbued by his love of words and laughter.

Dean Wilson's poems bristle with the sheer exhilaration of being alive. Particularly sharp on characters in the margins, Dean Wilson is one of the rare breed who can make your belly bounce with laughter. Hugely popular in London and here in Hull, where he lives.

Friday November 9th
8.00pm �4 (Conc �2.50) Tickets on the door

Clare Pollard & Antony Dunn

The poems of Clare Pollard's first collection The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe, 1998) were mostly written while she was still at school in Bolton.

"This is work you can't ignore�raw, reckless and more bloody-minded than an older, so-called wiser poet would dare to be." Selima Hill

She has since presented two TV poetry films, including her own Channel Four documentary on Bolton Youth as well as having been on the 'First Lines' promotion tour. Clare now lives in East London where she is writing a novel.

Antony Dunn won the 1995 Newdigate Prize while reading English at St.Catherine's College, Oxford. His first collection of poems, Pilots and Navigators, was published by Oxford University Press in 1998, and his second, Flying Fish, will be published by Carcanet next year. He also writes for film and stage and lives in York.

Fred Voss & Joan Jobe Smith (USA)
(Radio 4 Recording)

Fred Voss is a writer who REALLY gets his hands dirty: he doesn't just write about factory life, he LIVES it. He has driven up and down the California coast for 22 years, with a toolbox in his back seat, getting hired and fired by various machine shops, and writing about it in two collections of poetry Goodstone and Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls. Currently in England for his fifth tour, this is also his fifth reading in Hull. He has been prominently featured in B�te Noir (UK) and The Wormwood Review (USA). He lives in Long Beach, California, and is currently working in a 100-year-old factory in downtown LA, not far from where Charles Bukowski worked at the Post Office.

"Your poems about working at the machines, well, I liked them, understood them, sure" Charles Bukowski

Joan Jobe Smith, publisher of Pearl and the Bukowski Review, has published from Smith/Doorstop Trying on Their Souls for Size and The Pow Wow Café. In the UK & Ireland her work has appeared in many publications, including The 1999 Forward book of poetry, Penniless Press, B�te Noir, and most recently The Reater.

Friday November 16th
8.00pm �4 (Conc �2.50) Tickets on the door

Brendan Cleary, Geoff Hattersley & Peter Knaggs

"The eternal teenager of Irish poetry, Brendan Cleary's readings and performances are justly renowned: straight -talking, comic, neurotic, deeply moving" Martin Mooney

Brendan Cleary lives in exile from Co. Antrim in Newcastle, where he edited and survived The Echo Room. He works as a part time lecturer, performance poet and stand-up comic. "Here is a talent going to waste" PN Review

The apparent simplicity of Geoff Hattersley's sly funny poems belies a shrewd intelligence as much in tune with larger events as with the daily happenings which seem to form their subject. He is a poet of the people. Geoff lives in Huddersfield where he leads a double life, at night a poet and by day a machine operator.

"Cheeky, imaginative, cerebral, witty - it is poetry which has a lot to say for itself " Douglas Dunn

Racy, engaging, accessible, with an ear for anecdote and an eye for detail, Peter Knaggs identifies the extraordinary in everyday life and writes about it with wit and precision. His poems are sharp, colloquial, fast moving, his sense of humour wry and exacting. This young Hull poet is on its way up. "Impressive stuff" Big Issue