Poetry With Kelvin Corcoran and Lila Matsumoto

An evening of Shearsman poets, in association with Nottingham Poetry Exchange

Kelvin Corcoran is the author of, what? fifteen collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Facing West. In addition he has interviewed Lee Harwood for the volume, Not the Full Story: Six Interviews with Lee Harwood, published in 2008. His Collected Poems – a massive volume – came out from Shearsman in early 2023.

He has read extensively in the UK, Germany and Ireland and accompanied travelling Arts Council exhibitions reading poetry written in response to the work of contemporary painters and sculptors. Three extended interviews with him can be found in The Writing Occurs As Song: A Kelvin Corcoran Reader, the first full-length study of his work, edited by Andy Brown and published by Shearsman. Tonight he will be reading from his latest collection, published by Muscaliet.

Recent projects include collaboration with Greek musicians in setting his poetry to music, Medicine Unboxed writer-in-residence and collaborative performances with songwriters Jack Hues, Liam Magill and pianist Sam Bailey at the Free Range series of events in Canterbury. The sequence of poems A Thesis on the Ballad, performed by Jack Hues and the Quartet is available on CD and download. 

Lila Matsumoto teaches at the University of Nottingham, and has read in the bookshop before. She also organises Nottingham Poetry Exchange but tonight she returns to the platform. Her first full collection was Urn & Drum.

“The world within Urn & Drum is a cornucopia of shapes, colours, and objects, fashioned almost as a gleeful, surreal picture-book; a playful naivety that leads to serious questions of what it means to exist and feel in the world. Through linguistic dexterity and play, [these poems] exclaim heartbreak and test the limits of language in a single line.” —Rachael Allen

Refreshments provided