Dale Edwards reviews Lemn Sissay’s performance at the 8th Black and Asian Conference on the 8th of October 2016 at Contact Theatre and his new book Gold From the Stone

You’re always there but never quite here. Letters flow through your veins as you breath rhetoric; your heart an amalgam of emojis I sit… waiting… watching… … anticipating the response… My solitude satiated with interaction, I’m no longer sure if I am ever alone. And I wonder… what makes you different from the other skeletons […]

A featured poem by Books Contributor Elizabeth Gibson (@Grizonne)

Benjamin Mortimer takes a look at the 19th Century essayist Thomas de Quincey’s view of drug culture, highlighting parallels with the present day

Roma Havers reviews the unique celebration of the 60th anniversary of the first reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl

Ola Youssef reviews Fuel Café’s charity poetry event, Love Takes Guts, in aid of organ donation

Katherine Horrex tells us what’s going down at Manchester Literature Festival 2015

Find out what’s new with the Manchester Creative Writing Society and how you can get involved

A quick glance at upcoming writing competitions, including cash prizes for the financially-challenged student

Book Editor Yasmin Mannan investigates how the Young London Poet Laureate, Warsan Shire, has been exposing the suffering of refugees through the written word for years

Food Editor Ellie Gibbs takes up poetry for her review of literary-themed Didsbury restaurant, Volta

Lauren Gorton reviews Dominic Berry’s poetry performance for LGBT History month at Manchester Central Library

Intensely readable and relatable, Hawaiian Shirts in the Electric Chair reaches out to the disengaged and apathetic—with a trace of hope

Nicole Tamer interviews the talented poet, dancer and performer, Chanje Kunda.

Tamara Stanton heads to Instituto Cervantes in Deansgate to hear Catalan poets Josep Lluίs Aguiló and Manuel Forcano read from their newly published anthology

Olivia Stevens heads to the Martin Harris Centre to hear celebrated writers Ali Smith and Jackie Kay reflect on the legacy of Sylvia Plath

Emerging poet Helen Isserlis talks to Books Editor Esmé Clifford Astbury

Annie Muir finds manuscripts worth pressing up against the glass for, at the William Blake exhibition

Bad Language’s spoken word event takes an evening in the pub into a realm of uncertainty and suprise

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