Portico Poetry Prize Anthologies: Amendments.

The library can now confirm full details of our prizes' anthologies.

There will be two anthologies. One will contain winners and shortlisted poems from the Portico Poetry Prize; the other will publish winning / shortlisted poems from the Portico Young Poetry Prize and winning / highly commended pieces from the Portico Prize for Young Writers.

The anthologies will be available to buy soon.

Portico Poetry Prize 2012: prize giving.

The library is delighted to announce details of a prize giving for the Portico Poetry Prize.

The event will take place at the Mechanics Institute in Manchester on Saturday 13th October, running from 1.45-5.30pm; it will be part of an event at Manchester Literature Festival called Dickens Readers' Day. The prize giving will commence at 5pm.

The event costs £10 or £8 for concessions. To book, head over to manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk.

Portico Poetry Prizes 2012: winners.

Portico Poetry Prize

1st: `In the Dock, Fagin Reflects' - Marion Brown

2nd: `Great Expectations' - Ian O'Brien

3rd: `The Ghost of Christmas Present' - Holly Hopkins


Portico Young Poetry Prize

1st: `Hospital Visit' - Natalie Steinhouse

2nd: `Hollow' - Eugenie Yen

3rd: `Biddy, Or Unrequited Love' - Emily Stevenson

Once again, thanks to all who entered and taken interest; the prizes have been very successful. The library would like to offer congratulations to the winners.

We're also delighted to say we are planning an anthology for the competition, which will incorporate the winners from both prizes and list of commended poets. To those who didn't win, keep an eye out as you may be published in the anthology!

Portico Poetry Prizes 2012.

The 2012 Portico Poetry Prizes are now closed to entries. Thank you to everyone who entered and invested interest, it has been a fantastic success.

Keep an eye out for future updates, including results and prize-giving.

Portico Poetry Prizes.

We've had a wonderful response to the new prizes and would like to thank everyone who was invested interest in the prize.

The deadline is the 31st of July, so there's still a few days left for entries. After that, judging will commence!

Portico Poetry prizes.

The deadline is nearing for the new prizes and we are delighted with the response so far. The Young Prize in particular has had a fantastic response. The Poetry Prize still needs more entries but they are slowly growing in number. 

Those interested in entering the Portico Poetry Prize must do so soon. Don't forget there are great prizes to be won, including £200; £150; £100 and publication.

Forms can be found under the `Portico Poetry Prizes' heading or you can pop in to the library itself and pick one up!

Portico Library Fundraising Quiz Night!

Come to this summer night of Julian joie de vivre designed to tickle your intellectual palate and send your sensibilities soaring into the stratosphere. Expect serious questions, fun questions, difficult questions, very difficult questions, really really tough questions and a few tasty little teasers. Themed rounds will include, in this bicentenary year, Dickens — of course — as well as other literature and general knowledge.

Food and drinks will be served on the evening to stimulate the brain cells.

Mein host Ed Glinert will first provide the answers—then pose the questions. That’s when it gets even more interesting!

£15 per Ticket. Book by telephone (0161 236 6785), email (admin@theportico.org.uk), in person or through Eventbrite http://porticoquiznight2012.eventbrite.co.uk

Portico Poetry Prizes.

The library is delighted to announce full details of our new poetry competition.

There will be two awards; The Portico Poetry Prize and The Portico Young Poetry Prize. Entry for the former is £4; the latter is free.

All poems entered must be linked in some way to the works of Charles Dickens.

The Portico Poetry Prize will be judged by Mandy Coe; The Portico Young Poetry Prize will be judged by Richy Campbell, Lisa Mansell and Krishan Coupland.

The closing date for both competitions are 31st July.

For more and entry forms head over to the page entitled The Portico Poetry Prizes.

Dickens in the Reading Room

Sherry Ashworth, established author, Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Portico's writer-in-residence, reviews the first of her three Dickens Workshops (attendance of the workshops is free!) which took place in the Library last week, kicking off our celebration of Dickens' bicentenary: 

There is possibly no more blissful experience than sitting in the reading room on a late spring afternoon, surrounded by like-minded Portico readers, talking about Dickens.

And that is precisely how a group of us entertained ourselves for the first of a series of Dickens workshops.  ‘Workshops’ is a bit of a misnomer – participants had read Hard Times, but were also supplied with extracts from other novels, and our conversations ranged widely, as we tried to ascertain what Dickens had to tell us about the subject of education – a mission beautifully punctuated by tea and coffee half-way through.

So what did we decide?  That Hard Times is a fascinating but flawed novel – there was a general consensus that Elizabeth Gaskell was better on Manchester and industrial poverty.  That Dickens valued imagination above facts, hated all teachers who used bullying as a technique, didn’t much enjoy mental arithmetic and rated one-to-one tutoring above the serried ranks of the classroom.  And the best, most modern teacher in Dickens was none other than Fagin – who uses encouragement, drama, peer support and gin and sausages to educate young Oliver.

If you want to join us next time, we are meeting at 5 on Thursday May 24^th  having read (most of!) Our Mutual Friend in order to revisit the cliché that Dickens can’t do women.  Oh, can’t he?!  *rolls up sleeves*

Sherry's latest novel - a Jewish comedy of manners - is available exclusively as a Kindle title on Amazon  - Good Recipes and Bad Women

Book Group

Last night was the 3rd meeting of The Portico's newly established book group.  We have met once a month to discuss the books we have read - first was Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin, of which 12 copies were generously donated to the book group by the Manchester Literature Festival with the condition that the books continue to be passed on to other book groups; second was Dracula by Bram Stoker; and, most recently, The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley. 

As the books are chosen from suggestions by the members of the book group, the selection has so far been diverse.  Last night decided that our next read will be Do White Whales Sing at the Edge of the World by Paul Wilson, a past Portico Prize winner!

The book group is open to Library members and the general public and has ranged from about 10 to 5 people, but we believe we can accommodate up to 12 so there is certainly space for more book groupers!   The book group members have a great deal of insight to offer on various topics which keeps the discussions lively and interesting and of course, meeting in the Library of an evening with biscuits, coffee and tea, cosy chairs and low lighting creates an ambiance all in itself. 

If you would like to attend the book group contact librarian@theportico.org.uk

Northern Launch of "A Mutual Friend" at the Portico Library - We're all friends now!

Vice-Chair of the Library Lynne Allan reflects on her afternoon and evening with the poets involved in the Northern Launch of A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens, held at the Library on Wednesday evening:

A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens is as much a response to Dickens’ life as his legacy and its Salford-based editor Peter Robinson, Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Reading,brought a number of its contributing poets to Manchester with him for an evening of live poetry and discussion which was a feast for poetry lovers.

My day began with meeting Mairi MacInnes off the train from York. As this was her first visit to the Portico she carried a copy of A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens so she could be recognised! We returned to the Library to meet her fellow poets and had a very civilised afternoon tea made by our wonderful cook Kathy. Jeffrey Wainwright said they were the best scones he had ever tasted. If you want to see if you agree with him you could always pop in to the library to sample Kathy’s cakes and scones. Yum! Yum!

The poets talked about their work and what is going on in the world of poetry at the moment. As The Portico’s resident literary groupie, I listened in rapture! The evening began with wine and nibbles -the poets believing it important to relax the audience before a poetry reading. Our own Alan Shelston, long-time member of the Portico, introduced the poets and delighted us with his tribute to Dickens in poetic form:

 On a little dog, run over by Dickens’ carriage in the Hyde Park

‘Vague thoughts of a new book are rife within me just now; and I go wandering about at night into the strangest places especially ─ seeking rest and finding none. As an addition to my composure I ran over a little dog in the Regent’s Park yesterday (killing him on the spot) and gave his little mistress ─ a girl of thirteen or fourteen ─ such exquisite distress as I never saw the like of.’ (The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens ed. Jenny Hartley, 2012)

This little dog earned his distinction

Through his very sad extinction: 

Mr Dickens in his carriage,

Reflecting sadly on his marriage

Didn’t think to look outside

And so poor Fido quickly died. 

Dickens thought his little mistress

‘Exquisite’ in her dreadful distress.

Time it took when all was over

To regain his own composure.

This is an early entry for our Dickens poetry competition. Do you think it has a chance of winning? It is certainly in the spirit of  the occasion of Dickens' bicentenary as is A Mutual Friend.

Peter Robinson gave the audience a fascinating insight into the genesis of the book and then read his erudite poem Rubbish Theory. He followed this by introducing several other poets such as the lovely Mairi MacInnes, who movingly read her poem The Death Of Little Nell from the anthology and explained how she had first come across Dickens as a little girl of seven. We moved from an innocent death to award-winning poet Susan Utting’s poem about the death by drowning of the villain Quilp. Dogs in Dickens seem to be popular subjects for poems, as journalist and former MMU Professor Jeffrey Wainwright read his poem Merrylegs based on the dog in Hard Times, and the Portico’s very great friend and judge of the poetry section of the Portico Prize for Young Writers, Mandy Coe read her poem Bullseye, a heartfelt tribute to the dog of Bill Sykes. Hull University’s creative writing professor Carol Rumens followed with a reading of her inspiring poem Marshalsea Quadrille. All the contributors are fine examples of the formidable pedigree of the writers in the book (among the others: John Hegley, Philip Gross, Derek Beaven, Jayne Draycott and Manchester poet Peter Riley).

At the end of a wonderful evening the poets all dashed off to catch trains to various parts of the country but not before agreeing that we are all friends now and that the Portico Library is a wonderful place for book launches and poetry!

 A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens (2012) is published by Two Rivers Press with the English Association and is available for £10 from the Library or through Two Rivers Press.