LONDON: Night of the Goldrush Sounds

Sunday, 29th November 2009, 7.30pm 'til late, FREE
The Bell,
Middlesex Street,
Spitalfields,
London
E1 7EX

A London launch for The Night of the Day, Sounds in the Grass and After the Goldrush. Join Nine Arches Press to celebrate the launch of their three latest titles, including the first two Nine Arches Press books and a special edition pamphlet, with readings from David Morley, Matt Nunn and Peter Carpenter.

The Night of the Day - David Morley
The Night of the Day is remarkable for the skill and grace with which it travels through the difficult territories that map a journey from darkness towards light. In this movement from out of the shadows, it engages with tricks of the light, vanishings, illusions, magic and bitter realities, whilst using the terrain of language that each necessitates. From the brutally austere language that depicts a child’s experience of violence that opens this short collection, the poems move thematically into the natural world and the darting, shifting vocabularies of memory, friendship and loss. The Night of the Day keeps a solid and determined pace, which ultimately brings us under the canvas of the big top and into the lives of the travelling circus people, in their own words, their own voices, an undertow of threat and prejudice forever shadowing their footsteps on the road.

After the Goldrush - Peter Carpenter
Peter Carpenter’s poetry is radiant with quiet surprises, important moments captured in the folds of an old document wallet, in back gardens or on winter sea-fronts, buried in the sand or hidden by the noise of a football crowd. Such moments take flight to uncover a distinctive take on both ‘the here and now’ and the echoes of public and private histories. After the Goldrush is thus of its time and about time, in the attentive, skilful hands of a poet truly hitting his stride.

'…a new voice, precise and distinct, and therefore, doubly welcome' George Szirtes

'In short, Peter Carpenter is a masterly portrait-painter' - Matthew Jarvis, English

Sounds in the Grass - Matt Nunn
Join Matt Nunn as he travels through the spaces that define us, taking in subjects as diverse as Mother Nature, the back catalogues of youth, breaking down at the greasy spoon and hitting the highways, all accompanied by generous and bittersweet helpings of food, sex and music.
Matt Nunn’s third collection, following on from Apocalyptic Bubblegum and Happy cos I’m Blue is his most complete yet.

‘Nunn has the staccato, twisted, lyrical joy in language of an English Raymond Queneau and he brings it to bear on a beautiful, litter-strewn urban landscape where “civilisations intersect” in travestied platitudes, deep-dish riddles and a cavalcade of local detail all at about 100mph. If you’ve heard Nunn read out loud you’ll be familiar with this energy and the hallucinatory clarity of his imagery. He ploughs fearlessly straight into class, religion and education with frenzied, articulate wit matched by rage, which is not to overlook the genuine warmth and humanity beating underneath the surface. Sounds in the Grass realises the potential suggested by Nunn’s previous collections and then some.’ – Luke Kennard