In the beautiful and historical setting of St Andrew's Church, we offer a reading by two exciting, prize-winning contemporary writers, both of whom have been praised for transforming daily life into precious metals and making the ‘ordinary’ extraordinary. Liz Berry is an award-winning poet and author of the critically acclaimed collections_ Black Country_ (Chatto, 2014); _The Republic of Motherhood_ (Chatto, 2018); _The Dereliction_ (Hercules Editions, 2021), a collaboration with artist Tom Hicks; and most recently _The Home Child_ (Chatto, 2023), a novel in verse. Liz’s work, described as “_a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands_” (Guardian), celebrates the landscape, history, and dialect of the region. Liz has received the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and Forward Prizes. Her poem ‘Homing’, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus. David Clarke's first pamphlet, _Gaud_, won the Michael Marks Award in 2013. His first collection, _Arc_, was published by Nine Arches Press in 2015 and was longlisted for the Polari Prize. Another pamphlet, _Scare Stories_, was published by V Press in 2017 and was named a Poetry School ‘Book of the Year.’ His second collection, _The Europeans_, was published by Nine Arches in 2019. His poems have appeared in publications including Magma, Poetry Wales, and The Guardian. His third collection - _The Field in Winter_ elegantly reflects on memory, time, and the very particular landscape of loss, in a calendar of poems, a ‘charm of words’ that track and loop through seasons of nature and living. We thank the anonymous sponsor of this event for their generosity. FIRST WEEKEND SPECIAL OFFER Buy a ticket for this event, along with tickets for Something Old, Something New (Isabel Galleymore, Iris Lewis & Derek Healy) and Grief’s Alphabet (Carrie Etter and Tim Relf) and get 25% off all three tickets.