Poetry On Vinyl at Manchester Poetry Library
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
Award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician Anthony Joseph has been invited to curate a selection of recorded poetry to inaugurate the audio collection at the newly opened Manchester Poetry Library. The exhibition Poetry On Vinyl showcases Anthony Joseph’s selection of poetry records in its entirety, offering a tour of the genre from the early 20th century to the present day. You are invited to browse, watch and listen to Anthony’s choices online or in person – attendance is free, and you can drop by any time the library is open (closed Sundays; see the Eventbrite page for full opening hours).
The exhibition Poetry On Vinyl showcases Anthony Joseph’s selection of poetry records in its entirety, offering a tour of the genre from the early 20th century to the present day.
Anthony introduced the collection at a special lecture event last year at the new resource, part of Manchester Metropolitan University but now open to the general public, playing selected records blending music and poetry. He said: “Spoken word as a tool for revolutionary thought is always a potent combination when put with music.” He was joined at the event by Andrew John playing bass; Andrew has been a mainstay of Anthony’s core of musicians for over 10 years – as a musician, Anthony has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award.
Anthony Joseph is the author of three novels and four poetry collections – Desafinado (1994), Teragaton (1997) and the Salt-published Rubber Orchestras (2013) and 2012’s Bird, Head, Son, of which Linton Kwesi Johnson said he has “a powerful imagination”. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship.
His most recent publication is the experimental novel The Frequency Of Magic, which came out with Peepal Tree Press in 2019. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography Of A Calypso Icon was shortlisted for both the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award, and it was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. In 2020 a Spanish edition of Kitch was published, preceded by a Polish translation of his afrofuturist classic The African Origins Of UFOs. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths University and is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, Leicester.
