Book your free ticket for this special poetry book launch with NTU’s Linda Kemp and Andrew Taylor.
Join us for the launch of two new poetry books — The Moral Theology of the Devil / Clothed with the Sun by Linda Kemp (Research Fellow at NTU) and State Honey by Andrew Taylor (Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at NTU), both published by Leafe Press.
There will be readings (11:30-12pm & 12:20-12:50pm) from Linda and Andrew, accompanied by complimentary coffee and pastries. Leafe Press will present a dedicated stall featuring poetry books from their own publishing catalogue. This event is also an opportunity to catch Bonington Gallery’s exhibitions by Naeem Mohaiemen and John Dean which conclude on the same day.
Linda Kemp’s poetry books are: The Moral Theology of the Devil / Clothed with the Sun (Leafe Press, 2025), Annunciation Sonnets (Broken Sleep Books, 2024), Stitch (Contraband, 2020), and Lease Prise Redux (Materials, 2016).
Andrew Taylor has published four collections of poetry with Shearsman Books. He’s published a collection and two pamphlets with Leafe Press. He’s written critical books on the poets Adrian Henri and Peter Finch.
Leafe Press was launched 26 years ago at a reading in Nottingham Central library. Leafe Press has published two pamphlets by Lee Harwood who has now gone on to have a monumental Collected and is regarded as a major figure in 1960s and 70s poetry. Leafe has published several debut collections, including Carrie Etter’s debut UK collection, Whether. Carrie is now widely known and published by major publishers. The press has always had an interest in translation and in 2007 published a sequence (in English and French) by the Moroccan poet and dissident Abdellatif Laabi. This was the first UK publication by this major figure who is now published by Carcanet and received the Prix Goncourt, France’s biggest literary honour. Alongside that, the press has brought out work by significant poets of the ‘British Poetry Revival’, notably Geraldine Monk, Kelvin Corcoran and Frances Presley. Explore Leafe Press’ Litter magazine online.
On the occasion of our exhibition Waking the Witch: Old Ways, New Rites, please join us for an evening with poet Geraldine Monk. The evening will consist of a reading by Monk, followed by an in-conversation with NTU Research Fellow Linda Kemp and finish with a Q&A session.
First published in the 1970s, Geraldine Monk’s poetry has appeared extensively in the UK and the USA. Monk’s major collections of poetry include Interregnum (1994), Escafeld Hangings (2005), Ghost & Other Sonnets (2008), They Who Saw the Deep (2016), and numerous other books and collaborations. She is an affiliated poet at The Centre for Poetry and Poetics, University of Sheffield.
Geraldine Monk was born in Lancashire close to Pendle Hill, which achieved notoriety in 1612 as the epicentre of witchcraft and the subsequent Lancashire Witch Trials in Lancaster which resulted in 10 people being hanged. Growing up with the legend of the witches laid the foundations for her most celebrated collection of poetry Interregnum (1994) and a subsequent rearrangement of the monologues in Pendle Witch Words (2012). Exploring present-day and historical abuse and misuse of what Monk calls ‘language-magic’, she gifts the witches’ words they could never have owned or uttered in their lifetime.
Linda Kemp is a Research Fellow in the Social Work, Care and Community department at NTU. Their research is interdisciplinary, drawing on creative writing, sound performance and social research. Linda’s writing on Monk’s poetry can be found in On Repetition: Writing, Performance and Art (ed. Kartsaki, 2016). Linda also co-organises event programmes of poetry and sound performance.
The intention will be to make the evening as open as possible, and we will welcome contributions from the audience throughout the event. Light refreshments will be provided.
If you would like to attend this event please RSVP to confirm your attendance.
