Award-winning UK poets Imtiaz Dharker and Liz Berry to read from latest work at Wirral Borough of Culture 2024

Following August’s successful event with author Sarah Hall, award-winning poets Imtiaz Dharker and Liz Berry will be reading from and discussing their latest work in two free autumn events for Wirral Borough of Culture organised by The Reader. 

We're hosting two extra special author events with prize-winning UK poets Imtiaz Dharker and Liz Berry to celebrate Wirral Borough of Culture 2024 this autumn.  

They follow a successful afternoon of Shared Reading with Cumbrian author Sarah Hall in August. 

Imtiaz has said she is “thrilled and honoured” to be bringing her latest poetry collection to New Brighton Floral Pavilion on Monday 14 October.  

At An Evening with The Reader and special guest Imtiaz Dharker, from 6pm to 9pm, the poet will be reading from and talking about Shadow Reader, published in May this year and illustrated with her own black and white drawings.  

Imtiaz Dharker said: “It’s exciting to bring Shadow Reader to Wirral for this exceptional Shared Reading. It is such a great idea, to gather as a community, to read aloud and think about a piece of writing together.  

“It’s inspiring to see how The Reader events extend the pleasure of reading and make it accessible to many more people as a shared experience. I’m thrilled and honoured that Shadow Reader has been chosen for this.” 

Shared Reading differs from conventional book groups where people read a book and come together to talk about it. In Shared Reading groups, a trained Reader Leader trained by the charity, selects a range of stories and poems to read aloud together to help people connect and share thoughts, feelings and experiences. Everyone is welcome and groups are free to all. 

At these special Wirral Borough of Culture events the authors will be joining the group to hear people’s responses and answer questions. There is no pressure to talk or read aloud. 

A poet, artist and video filmmaker, Imtiaz was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014 for Over the Moon. Born in Pakistan, she grew up in Glasgow, lived in India for many years and is now based in London.  

She has been Chancellor of Newcastle University since 2020. Her poems are on the GCSE and A Level syllabus, and she reads with other poets to more than 35,000 students across the UK a year at Poetry Live! 

Graeme Richardson, critic at The Sunday Times, wrote in his summer poetry review: “If you’re not a regular reader of poetry, Imtiaz Dharker gives you a place to start. Shadow Reader, her seventh collection from Bloodaxe, is not only easily accessible, but also hauntingly relevant in this time of war and displacement... 

“With clever but not intrusive rhyme and rhythm these are poems to read aloud. And while there’s no hiding from the world’s reality...ultimately Dharker’s poetry is a gesture of hope.” 

An Afternoon with The Reader and Liz Berry, will follow at Wallasey Central Library on Friday 22 November, 2.30pm - 5pm. The award-winning Birmingham poet will be joining The Reader to read live from and discuss her latest novel-in-verse The Home Child (Chatto, 2023).  

The Home Child is a book length poem inspired by the true story of Liz’s great aunt as a child far from home. It tells how Eliza Showell, 12-years-old and newly orphaned, boarded a ship that was to carry her from the slums of Britain’s Black Country to rural Nova Scotia in 1908. 

Liz’s work, described as “a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands” (Guardian), celebrates the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Her poem Homing, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus. 

She is recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and Forward Prizes.  

Copies of Imtiaz Dharker’s Shadow Reader and Liz Berry’s The Home Child will be available to purchase at each event with the opportunity to have them signed.  

Both author’s poems are a firm favourite with Shared Reading groups across the UK. We run 424 Shared Reading groups across the UK in diverse settings including open for all community groups. Find a group nearest to where you live at thereader.org.uk/findagroup  

If you live on the Wirral and are interested in training as a volunteer Reader Leader, please contact our Liverpool City Regional Partnerships Lead Abi Blackburn here.