TWOOMPH! ft HAND OF GLORY book launch

A gathering for poets and prose writers in Teesside, offering a platform to lauch new books and celebrate community writing, and a supportive space for individuals to share their words and weirdness.

This month we celebrate the launch of HAND OF GLORY, the latest collection by Moddlesbrough legend Bob Beagrie, with support from Sara Dennis singing dark folk songs, and Katie Metcalfe's gothic-Norse poetic vibes.

A free masterclass with Bob will be available immediately prior to this event, running 5.30pm-7pm in either Chapel or the Sanctuary Space next door. This workshop is provided by Borderlands as part of a 5-month programme of events paving the way for the appointment of a Poet Laureate for South Teesside in 2026. Tickets for the workshop will be available on their website in due course.

HAND OF GLORY (Yaffle Press) is Bob Beagrie's fifteenth collection of poetry, and brings humour and horror together in stories of the severed, dried and pickled hand of a hanged man...

'The Hand of Glory: a biography' is an absurd narrative told as a sequence of prose poems which relate the adventures and exploits of the infamous mummified human hand currently displayed in Whitby Museum.
A Hand of Glory was supposedly the carefully prepared and “pickled” right hand of a felon, cut off while the body still hung from the gallows and used by burglars to send sleepers in the house into a coma from which they were unable to wake. Hands of Glory appear in various tales of European folklore.

"...a real roller coaster of a read full of fireworks - lyrical, rhythmical and bursting with imagery. 'The Hand of Glory' is a fable for our times." Ann Caldwell

"The Hand of Glory is a fascinating cavalcade of dark humour and social observation, showcasing Beagrie’s brilliant sense of rhythm and associative chains, rooted in a tradition reminiscent of Borges." Ville Hytönen, the chairperson of the Union of Finnish Writers

This event is hosted by Julie Easley for TWP, but is open to audience and readers of all genders - where necessary, priority for time on the mic will go to women/GNC poets.

Sign up to read on the door.

Pay What You Can, suggested donation £3 but you can give more - or choose a Free ticket, no questions asked.

Host or Publisher Tees Women Poets