Play your part in ensuring the future of The Portico’s unique collection with our adopt-a-book scheme

Since it was built in 1806, The Portico has developed a fascinating collection of mainly 19^th century books, with subject matter ranging from Botany to Architecture, and from History to The Occult. Having been chosen over the years by its members, the collection can be said to be truly unique to the Portico, and representative of the interests of those who frequented the library in years gone by. The collection also forms a valuable aid to 19^th century studies, with researchers from across the UK and beyond consulting the many volumes on the shelves.

Yet having been built in the centre of an emerging industrial city, a combination of the resultant pollution, the mass production of paper and the use of gasoliers for lighting and heating have all taken their toll on the books. Whilst the generosity of a number of grant giving bodies and of supportive individuals has enabled crucial conservation and preservation work to be undertaken upon approximately a quarter of the Collection, there are still many books whose deterioration needs to be addressed.

The Portico needs your support to continue carrying out this vital conservation and preservation work, so that we can ensure that the books on our shelves may be read and enjoyed by many more generations to come.

Our adopt-a-book scheme is one way in which you could help. The scheme works in two ways: if you have a particular interest, you can select the author, title or subject of a book you wish to adopt, or you can simply make a donation that will help towards other priority volumes within the collection. In return for your generosity and support, a permanent bookplate will be placed within the volume/s, recording your name, date and a dedication of your choice.

Please feel free to ask a member of staff should you require any further information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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?! 

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!

Coming up at the library in August 2012

A NATURAL SELECTION

An Exhibition of Sculpture and Framed Three-Dimensional Works

by

Fiona Heron



Natural Collection, Fiona Heron, 2012

Fiona Heron is an artist, photographer and landscape architect. Inspired by the intriguing, organic patterns of Nature, Fiona’s creativity is fuelled by a desire to infuse Nature’s poetry into visual expression. Her work embraces the dual influence of Natural and Architectural forms and is enlivened with an elegant formality. Inhabitants of Manchester will already be familiar with her work - as Fiona is the creator of the  11m high bronze Tree of Rememberance that can be found in Piccadilly Gardens.

Fiona makes no distinction between the different fields of her work, be it sculpture, landscape architecture or photography. Rather, she has a central creative vision which is expressed through each chosen medium. Her expression derives from a deeply-felt personal link with Nature and a decisive awareness of how it exists within a distinctive, man-made context. The Fiona Heron Practice strap line – ‘the nature of art and design’ - carries this message with light-hearted ambiguity.



Nest, Fiona Heron, 2012


In the same way that Fiona makes no discrimination between the different aspects of her work, she rejects the division made between science and art: this philosophy is embodied in A Natural Selection. Responding to the historic context of the Portico Library and its internal architecture, the exhibition plays upon a Darwinian reference in bringing together what might be termed a free-standing and framed personal collection of art species. In keeping with the main character of her work, Fiona merges natural and architectural forms with an innovative approach to materials and techniques.

 Preview on Wednesday 1^st August, 6pm-8pm

http://fionaheronpreview.eventbrite.com/

Exhibition continues until 30^th August 2012

Admission to preview and throughout the exhibition is free

For further details, phone the Library on 0161 236 6785 or e-mail exhibitions@theportico.org.uk

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 Prize: Alan Forsyth - `Waypoints' review.

by Richy Campbell

Nature, in all its faces, is the primary concern of Waypoints. We read about Nature’s operations, in the elegiac `Suddenly at Burneside’ in the `Dew-laden grass | Laced with sparkling webs of spiders’ necklaces’ in `Lambrigg Spring’ and about her people, from `The reclusive guardian of the warehouse | On Brunswick Dock North’ to the soldier `Travelling untrammelled | By wealth or obligations` in `Travelling Light’.

Forsyth’s eye is panoramic, spreading wide, from across the world he sees and to the inside of the mind. His work brings to mind the Larkin quote `the impulse to preserve lies at the bottom of all art’ with the world in the poems preserved in detail that is intricate, physical and photographic. Indeed the reader sees and smells the `Coal gas and over-heated bodies | encased in oil-soaked overalls’ in `The Black Years: undoubtedly some of the conjurations in these poems would make for an interesting collection of photographs.

Often, there is high commitment to music, which we see in `Brown Gold’; `A luckless un-spent penny, offered boldly by a careless boy'; and `Hunted’:

For something or someone is creeping there,

Too close for ease, in tom-tiddler’s ground

In that zone of unreality

Between light and shade, silence and sound.

With the last example showcasing the poet’s awareness of breath and subtlety, with close reading revealing intricacy in the way the para-rhyme of `ease’ and `unreality’ falls in the lines.

More often than not, the poems maintain their tone, consistent within themselves; an impressive example of this is in the ode to lost love `Ghost Hunting' which deals perfectly with the subject without straying into cliché:

            What sort of future can survive.

            Other than the ritual dance of love

            Performed by proxy lovers

            To the half remembered sounds

            Of our old music?

Converse to this, I feel that similar treatment could have been employed in `Lullaby’ which deals with parenthood. I felt it used tired rhymes `Oh little love | My gentle dove’ and second-hand sentiment `My hand and | Command | A lifetime Of devotion’. There are also other instances where I feel that sometimes certain lines weaken the impact of their precedents such as in `Suddenly at Burneside' where the speech `They always look like that, | The blood sinks to the lower side | When ever they die facing down.' feels unnatural, as if it slips out of tone.

With consideration of all its poems, Waypoints is an intricate and sensitive collection. There is mostly a sense of control within the lines and a personalised dealing with the subjects. It is a collection for human beings and deals with our confusing relationship with Nature and the finality of its control over us. In this instance, how fitting it is that the collection is bookended by the natural polars of life and death, with `Lambrigg Spring’ detailing `The power of the growing Birch tree’ and `When I Have Gone’ addressing a presumed loved to `Have no concern’ after the narrators death.