Do androids dream of electric poets? Come along to Open Book at The Organ Grinder, Nottingham on Tuesday 4th July at 8pm to find out.

We have an amazing triple bill lined up: Logan Thwaites, Charlie Baylis and Manjit Sahota. You won’t want to miss it.

LOGAN THWAITES


Logan has been writing fiction since his teens, primarily for himself for fun and he also had his first short story published in a zine in December! Logan is also a poet and has been performing a variety of styles of poems on many subjects around Nottingham, Derby and Leicester for the last year or so. Logan most enjoys writing about themes of sexuality, gender and mental health.

MANJIT SAHOTA

Originally from Nottingham, Manjit S Sahota is the co-founder of Poets Against Racism.

He has performed on stage and hosted Linton Kwesi Johnson and shared poetry and political debate with rapper Lowkey. 

Manjit enjoys the chance to bring his brand of poetry to spark conversation and engage with people from all cultures and backgrounds. 

His mission is clear: Love Poetry. Hate Bigotry.

CHARLIE BAYLIS

Charlie Baylis is from Nottingham, England. He is the editor of Anthropocene.

His first collection of poetry a fondness for the colour green is published by Broken Sleep Books.

Baylis has an uncanny ability to shift tone, as if between languages, with absolute fluency: these poems can turn from innocence to cynicism and back again within a single line. A surface reading makes you reach for terms like anarchic or surreal, but that doesn’t do the work justice, neither its soul nor its worldliness nor its unconditional love and petty irritation. The speakers get stuck on the details (fake lashes, limerence, unhealthy parasocial obsession with celebrity or poetry) but they’re always going somewhere and urgently gesturing you to follow. a fondness for the colour green is utterly and unabashedly contemporary, but there’s nothing light or modish, and what stands out are the moments of wounded humour and wonder, plenty of wonder, despite it all, because of it all.”

– Luke Kennard, Notes on the Sonnets

With tourmaline imagery, and reiterative hopes set against reiterative despairs, Baylis dances his way through this compelling and picaresque collection. Arch and playful in their acknowledgement of that gulf between poet and ‘I’, these poems rejoice in showing their conceptual strings, but never dispense with that vital vulnerability. a fondness for the colour green is a self-aware, sad, and beautiful book.”

– Susannah Dickey, Common Decency