The Language Club is Plymouth’s longest-running live poetry reading series and, almost certainly, one of the longest-running live poetry reading series in the UK. It’s been going since February 2000, hosting over a hundred events at a variety of locations including Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth College of Art and the Plymouth Athenaeum. These events have typically featured local writers alongside guest readers from the wider Southwest region, the rest of the UK and from as far away as New York, Paris and Berlin. We’ve not kept count, but the total runs well into the hundreds.

On Thursday 26th May, commencing at 7.30 pm, the Language Club returns to Marjon for the first time since 2006, when In The Presence of Sharks – an anthology of new poetry from Plymouth – was launched. Six of its most regular readers will present their work as follows.

Margaret Corvid is a poet, copywriter and journalist, originally from the USA and now based in Plymouth. Her articles have been published widely online, including in the Guardian, the New Statesman, Cosmopolitan, and Narratively. Her poems have appeared in Red Wedge and as part of WonderZoo’s online anthologies. She is a member of the Deadbeats and the Etherpoems digital poetry collective and her debut collection, Singing in the Dark Times, has recently been published by Patrician Press.

Mélisande Fitzsimons is a French poet and translator, resident in Plymouth, who writes in both French and English. Her debut English collection, A Language of Spies, came out in 2019 with Crafty Little Press and her new book Life Here is Full of Tomorrows, a series of postcard poems, was published recently by Leafe Press. Her work has been published in a wide variety of magazines both here and abroad. Mélisande also has a volume in French, a collaboration with the conceptual artist Mathieu Ducournau.

Norman Jope, who has worked at Plymouth Marjon University since 2002, is one of the organisers of Plymouth Language Club. He has published six full-length collections of poetry, five in English and one in Hungarian translation. These include The Book of Bells and Candles (Waterloo, 2009), Dreams of the Caucasus (Shearsman, 2010), Aphinar (Waterloo, 2012) and most recently The Rest of the World (Shearsman, 2021). He has also edited In the Presence of Sharks, an anthology of new poetry from Plymouth (Phlebas, 2006), and a book of critical essays on the work of the poet Richard Berengarten (Salt and Shearsman, 2010 and 2015).

Kenny Knight has published two collections, both with Shearsman - The Honicknowle Book of the Dead (2009) and A Long Weekend on the Sofa (2016). He organises/hosts the open mic group Cross Country Writers and his third collection, Love Letter to an Imaginary Girl Friend, is due out from Shearsman shortly. Kenny has a long association with the Plymouth poetry scene and has read his work throughout the South-west and occasionally in London.

Merris Longstaff was born in Jamaica and emigrated to the UK in the 1960s. She started a nursing career in the 1970s and in more recent years trained as a therapeutic counsellor. As a descendant of the Windrush Generation, her rich experience of both British and Caribbean cultures has exerted a significant influence on her poetry. Her work is written and usually delivered in an authentic patois style, which strives to tackle the highly sensitive subjects of racism and politics with both punch and humour. Her poetry has appeared in the anthology The Commons, edited by Thom Boulton and Sam Richards (Waterhare Press).

Steve Spence is one of the organisers of the Language Club. His collections include A Curious Shipwreck (Shearsman 2010, shortlisted for the Forward Prize best first collection), Limits of Control (Penned in the Margins, 2011), Maelstrom Origami (Shearsman, 2014), Many Red Fish (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2019), Eat Here Get Gas & Worms (Red Ceilings, 2021) and his current Shearsman collection (2021), How the Light Changes. He also reviews regularly for Tears in the Fence, Stride and Litter.

Admission is free, but donations will be collected for the Disasters Emergency Committee Ukraine appeal – please give generously and support Ukraine. Books by the authors will also be available (cash payments only).