Madeline Miller and The Song of Achilles

Thursday 6th September from 6.30pm

The Portico Library, Urmston Bookshop, and Bloomsbury present

Winner of the Orange Prize for fiction 2012

Madeline Miller

reading from her award winning debut novel,

The Song of Achilles

A breathtakingly original rendering of the Trojan War - a devastating love story and a tale of gods and kings, immortal fame and the human heart

On the New York Times Best Seller list and hailed to great acclaim.

The reviews say it all ...

“If I were to give a prize for the best work of fiction I’ve read this year, this would be the runaway winner.”   A N Wilson

 [This novel] “will appeal to young and old, men and women, readers of both commercial and literary fiction”   The Guardian

 "Miller's fantastic first novel – shortlisted for the Orange Prize this week – seems singular in its scope and scholarship" The Independent

“A captivating retelling of the Iliad and events leading up to it … it’s a hard book to put down, and any classicist will be enthralled by her characterisation of the goddess Thetis, which carries the true savagery and chill of antiquity.” Donna Tartt,The Times 

Tickets - £7.per person –

7.30pm start (drinks will be available from 6.30pm)

Book by ‘phone (0161-236 6785), email (admin@theportico.org.uk), in person or through Eventbrite

               

Saturday Openings from September

September 8th and 9th (Saturday and Sunday) The Portico will be having special 'open days' as part of Manchester's Heritage Open Days 2012.  Members of the public are welcome to come in and have a (free) tour of the Library. Staff and volunteers from the membership will be on hand and refreshments will be available.  This will be taking place during Stephen Fallow's photography exhibition Sidetracked: A Visual Journey from Carlyle to Manchester in the Gallery.

Following our Heritage Open Days, we will be trialling Saturday openings at the Portico - 10am to 2pm.  The first Saturday we open will be the 15th September and this will run every Saturday until Christmas closing!  Tea, coffee and cakes will be available on the Saturdays and the Gallery and Reading Room open as normal.  We are very excited for it and wondering why we haven't done this all along?! 

Faro Productions' "Apparition"

Faro Productions' Apparition is the first theatre production to USE the Library as its play's actual setting but Faro Productions has not just used the Portico as a setting; they have incorporated volumes from the collection (mainly those in the Occult section...) in the plot!

The trailer for the performance below says it all:

Performances will be on the evenings of Friday 8th and Saturday 9th June

Visit Eventbrite  or email admin@theportico.org.uk to book. You've got to come!

Razorblades and Roses, an Exhibition by Mick Wilson

Tuesday night saw the opening of a new exhibition at the Portico; Razorblades and Roses by Mick Wilson. An excited, expectant feeling hung in the air as final preparations took place. Everything ready, the evening kicked off at six and before long, the room was filled with the buzz of voices as attendees strolled about beneath the glass dome of the library.  It was an enjoyable night, flowing with good conversation and wine and attended by many art lovers, creative individuals and friends and family of the artist. There was an energetic feel to the room throughout the evening, which lingered on even after the last guest had departed, as we washed the last of the glasses and turned off the lights.

Mick Wilson’s work is undeniably vibrant, colourful and imaginative - a combination which cannot fail to draw the eye and arrest the attention of the viewer. Upon entering the exhibition space, one is also struck by how beautifully the work has been exhibited by the artist, who makes excellent use of the space within the gallery. Centre stage and presiding over the exhibition is his Shee-La-Na-Gig, the artist’s three-dimensional interpretation of the bizarre carvings commonly found on Norman churches. Flanked on either side by large, bright works executed in oils and acrylics and painted on board, the overall effect is very striking. The exhibition boasts a large number of works in a range of media, which take the form of paintings, sculptures and drawings.

Razorblades and Roses runs until the 30^th May and entry to the exhibition is free.

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

More Poetry for the Portico Prize for Young Writers

The events for 2011's Portico Prize for Young Writers were filled with poetry, from Kate Fox's Library Light at the Awards Evening to Manchester based performance poet Kieren King's specially commissioned poem The Portico which he performed at the closing event.  As Vice-Chair Lynne Allan put it, Kieren "brilliantly and cleverly wove together all the elements of the Library's past, present and future and memorably performed his poem on the evening".  Kieren is the 2012 champion of The Bilston Love Poetry Slam and a member of Working Verse with Dave Viney and Benny-Jo Zahl, with whom he's acted in Amateur Thematics at The Lowry (2012) and is currently working on Working Verse's first collection of verse. The closing event for the Portico Prize for Young Writers was a success with the young writers, their families, the mentors, judges and teachers. And generous sponsor of both the Library and the Portico Prize, Sir John Zochonis was in attendance.

Dai Owen, a great supporter of the Library,
 produced some fantastic sketches of the evening.

The Portico by Kieren King

You can keep your Kindle
It doesn't smell
Like a book smells
Doesn't feel
Like a book feels
I'd rather flick pages
Than touch screens
So under this dome
Flanked by these tomes

I feel home

As I spies

With my two eyes

Previous winners of the Portico Prize

I do wonder

Were these writers ever haunted

By the ghosts of aspiring writers

Past, present and yet to come

Not burdened by chains

But weighed down

By the books that went unwritten

The ideas they pushed aside

The stories they never told

Met too many unceasingly soused scribblers

Perpetual pub philosophers

Rhapsodising random rhetoric

About the opus that they're "working on"
Paper in the left hand
Pen in the right
And ne'er the twain shall meet

Through the best of times and the worst of times

Writers write

Though every flash of inspiration

Is punctuated by a thousand false starts

Writers write

Through blocks, wrong turns and dead ends

Writers write

Even if there's something good on telly

So we're here to celebrate our Northern identity
Its cultural legacy
And your literary quality

It's not so grim up North

It's not flat caps and whippets

It's splitting the atom

Who will join the winners that came before?
Who will have me begging

Please sir can I have some more?

Treasures of Travel - April Exhibition

The Portico Library presents an exhibition in celebration of the commencement of its Retrospective Cataloguing project.  The Voyages and Travels section is truly a demonstration of the travel habits, both for exploration and leisure, of the 19th century society which the Library represents and this exhibition highlights the treasures of this section.

Lyons McLeod (frontispiece portrait of the author) from

Travels in Eastern Africa; with the narrative of a residence in Mozambique

London: Hurst and Blackett, 1860 (Me 45-1)

Voyages and Travels is classified under the letter ‘M’ and contains 2088 titles within 2747 volumes.  The works range from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and cover travel and voyages to all parts of the world. The collection encompasses military, adventure, diplomacy, leisure and exploratory travel and works by women travellers are a highlight.

Constance Gordon-Cumming (frontispiece portrait of the author) from

Wanderings in China

London and Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1886 (My 231-2)

The exhibition opens today and will run until the 30th April. The Gallery is open to members and the public Monday to Friday, 9.30 - 4.30 and has late night openings to 7.30 pm on Thursdays.  Entry is free.

Sidy. Hafsan, Late Bey of Tripoli (frontispiece portrait) from

Narrative of a ten year's residence at Tripoli in Africa...

by Richard Tully, London: Henry Colburn, 1816 (Mz 35)

Library Light by Kate Fox

Kate Fox, Newcastle-based writer, comedian and poet was commissioned by the Portico Library to write and perform the following poem on the occasion of the Awards evening for the Portico Prize for Young Writers 2011.

Library Light by Kate Fox                

You zoom in from the Information Highway

besieged by talkers, bloggers, stalkers,

cybercasting their facts, stomach contents,

minute by minute feelings,

saying Follow Me, Swallow Me,

Beg me and Borrow me.

You come to rest under the Portico’s domed ceilings,

plug into to the nineteenth century mind,

upload it to your synapses, absolutely free,

expand your soul, expand your brain,

before BBM, MSN, and Facebook friends,

drive you cybernetically insane.

No LOLs, no Texts, No Smilies,

No ROFL, LMAO,

just fine minds sharing everything they know,

and not all at once...

Begun in 1806

by blokes knowing a growing city

would be needing a reading and knowledge fix.

They were wise then,

apart from how they only let in men

and people who owned at least a house.

Things have changed,

we know that’s silly,

now you need neither a mortgage nor a willy,

just a mind that’s ready for more illumination

than Blackpool,

more expansion than Eammon Holmes’

trousers

and does not fear Beauty, Truth

and better interior decoration than IKEA.

Fine Art, Biographies, Voyages

and that underused category; Polite,

you’ll find them under the library’s light

Maybe in this very building someone said -

Roget - have you got any more words for us?

and he went off and wrote his famous Thesaurus

John Dalton researched weather,

colour blindness,

invented Atomic Theory

another multi talented 19^th century fellow,

though his own optics only ran to

blue and purple and yellow.

Then there was Sir Robert Peel,

a Prime Minister of reforming zeal,

he’s the reason the Police are still called Bobbies

using the Portico for highbrow hobbies.

Mrs Gaskell borrowed 94 pages worth of books

but you couldn’t have come here to meet her -

though you could have bumped into Thomas de Quincey

the Opium Eater.

A writer, a wit, a bookish bloke,

some volumes still wreathed in his smoke.

It’s not all about celebs of course,

not saying you’d come here if you wanted to meet

George Clooney

or talk about Victorian voyages with Wayne Rooney-

though it has hosted one footballing star

in the form of erudite Eric Cantona.

Every modern library,

needs a modern philanthropist.

Thanks to a Knight in shining book binding,

Sir John Zochonis,

The Portico Prize -

once nearly Stuart Maconie’s -

has rewarded

luminaries such as Anthony Burgess

and Val McDermid.

It’s part of the necessary fighting

for the recognition of Northern writing.

Young Writers are encouraged

and mentored, and reflect the light

of knowledge in their eyes

with their very own literary prize.

They will take it back

to the Information Superhighway,

with a nourishing rest stop on the way,

unplug from the library’s lantern light,

the dome of their brain,

settling down into the hypnagogic states of night

where books and texts are dreamed,

words and journeys begin,

careers and ideas and new connections

sparked, as Then meets Now

and if you search then you shall find,

a thousand more hidden treasures

in the library of your mind.

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.

Hiring the Portico

Last night, the evening was aflow with legal beagles from the Lincoln House Chambers and various local law firms. The atmosphere was bubbly just like the champagne and the Library was a hive of activity. Champagne corks popping, attendants with plates of canapés weaving in and out of clusters of lords, barristers, and judges who all came to celebrate Kate Blackwell’s elevation to Queen’s Council.

Kate was introduced to The Portico Library by a friend, Charlotte Holland, who is not only her colleague from the Lincoln House Chambers but also a member of our fair Library. It was then that Kate decided that she wanted to hold her celebration festivities here with us at the Portico.  Once she came to have a look at the library with Charlotte it was Love at First Sight. The space sold itself. And who could resist? Founded in 1806 our Grade II* listed building makes for a quirky and certainly noteworthy location to hold any function.  From parties to presentations, meetings to mezzes, soirées to celebrations. The possibilities could be endless.

To find out more information about hiring the library for an event, filming or photoshoots  please call us on 0161 236 6785 or alternatively email admin@theportico.org.uk