BCU at The Woodman: Patrick McGuinness & Gregory Leadbetter In Conversation

Join us for a FREE evening of prose, poetry, and conversation brought to you by the Department of English and Media at Birmingham City University, upstairs at the legendary pub, The Woodman!

Join Patrick McGuinness and Gregory Leadbetter in conversation about their two recent books: (CB Editions, 2025) by Patrick McGuinness and (Nine Arches Press, 2025) by Gregory Leadbetter.

With readings of both prose and poetry, they'll be talking about in-between places, personal and collective histories, memory and imagination, the wild and the made, the branchlines of European culture, and the life of language.

Patrick McGuinness’s previous books include the poetry collection Blood Feather (Jonathan Cape, 2023), two collections of poetry, two novels – The Last Hundred Days (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award) and Throw Me to the Wolves (winner of the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award) – and a non-fiction book about place, time and memory, Other People's Countries, which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, won the Wales Book of the Year, and the Duff Cooper Prize. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford.

Gregory Leadbetter’s previous books and pamphlets include Caliban (Dare-Gale Press, 2023), a New Statesman Book of the Year 2023; Balanuve, with photographs by Phil Thomson (Broken Sleep, 2021); Maskwork (Nine Arches Press, 2020), longlisted for the Laurel Prize 2021; The Fetch (Nine Arches Press, 2016), and The Body in the Well (HappenStance Press, 2007). His recent work for the BBC includes the extended poem Metal City (Radio 3, 2023). As a critic he publishes widely on the history and practice of poetry, and his book Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination was awarded the University English Book Prize 2012. He is Professor of Poetry at Birmingham City University.

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