Announcing the final Bi+ Lines event in Manchester & news from the queers
National Poetry Competition wins, viral poems and more
Hello bi+ poetry fan!
This week I’m heading to Scotland for a duet of Bi+ Lines launches in Edinburgh on Wednesday (with Ilisha Thiru Purcell and Len Lukowski) and Glasgow on Friday (with Nasim Rebecca Asl and Beth Harrison). There are still tickets for the gig at Lighthouse Bookshop, and you can also tune into the livestream too!
But the big news today is that we’ve just announced the final Bi+ Lines launch event, in Manchester on 22 May. That’s right, this eight-month-long jaunt around the UK is coming to an end, as all good things must, but we’re going out with a bang. More info below.
Before we get into that, some other miscellaneous news!
First, I want to congratulate Bi+ Lines contributor Imogen Wade on winning first prize in the National Poetry Competition. Her poem ‘The Time I Was Mugged in New York City’ beat 19,000 other poems entered into the competition from 8,841 poets in 110 countries, scooping her the top prize of £5,000. Those are just utterly mind-boggling numbers, and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her. Read the prize-winning poem here. (I also loved that she gave a shout-out to fellow Bi+ Lines contributor Freya Bantiff in her interview about the win in Poetry News - Freya who of course won third-prize in the National Poetry Competition last year.)
And I wanted also to mention that Kyla Jamieson’s poem in the anthology, ‘My Sexual Orientation is Spring’, has just yesterday been shared by daily poem Instagram account @grieftolight and is racking up thousands of likes! It’s really lovely to see this poem finding a life of its own out there in the big wide world (wide web) and getting the love it deserves.
And now…
Bi+ Lines @ Queer Lit / Social Refuge, Manchester on 22 May
I couldn’t be happier to be finishing the UK tour of Bi+ Lines in Queer Lit’s brand new (and huge!) space in Manchester. We’ll be in the city’s biggest LGBTQ+ bookshop on 22 May with incredible anthology contributors Fee Griffin, Jake Wild Hall and Lenni Sanders. I’m looking to book some BSL interpreters for this one too - watch this space - and nab your tickets below.
That’s all for now - Scottish folks, I’ll see you later this week, and hope to wave at some of you living further afield via Wednesday night’s livestream.
Take care, pals!
Helen