Verbose at The King’s Arms
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
Award-winning Verbose is one of Manchester’s longest-running monthly spoken word and live literature events, and this is the final outing for 2024, featuring an open mic plus two guest performers – this month Isabelle Kenyon and Rosie Garland.
Now creeping up on a decade (there’s a big tenth birthday bash organised for January), and helmed by the new line-up of Becky May and Alice Godliman joining Ilaria Robinson-Passeri and Alicia Fitton, Verbose is a night with a real community vibe that welcomes all types of new writing, and offers a vibrant mix of spoken word and live literature – expect poetry, prose and everything in between. The talented bill of open mic acts includes newcomers as well as writers with decades of experience; if you’d like to bagsy a four-minute reading slot to showcase any type of writing, get in touch with Verbose direct before 7 December to put your name on the list (or waiting list).
So, a little more on December’s headliners…
Isabelle Kenyon is a Manchester writer and the author of psychological thriller The Dark Within Them, poetry collections including Growing Pains (Indigo Dreams) and one short story with Wild Pressed Books (‘The Town Talks’). In 2018 she founded Fly on the Wall Press, a political publisher of fiction and poetry, achieving Small Press finalist status at the British Book Awards for the last four years and winning in the North in 2024. She just picked up a Manchester Culture Award for the press, in the Environmental Sustainability category. She has had work published internationally in journals such as Ink, Sweat & Tears and The Bookseller, and she has performed at Cheltenham Poetry Festival and Leeds International Festival. She coordinates the Northern Fiction Alliance at Comma Press and runs PR campaigns for writers and publishers under Kenyon Author Services.
Rosie Garland is a writer of poetry, short stories and novels, and she is also the singer with post-punk band The March Violets, who have recently been touring the States. Her passion for language has been nurtured by public libraries. Val McDermid has named her one of the UK’s most compelling LGBT writers. Her poetry collection What Girls do the Dark (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Polari Prize, and her latest novel is The Fates, a retelling of the Greek myth. Coming soon with Fly on the Wall is her first collection of short fiction, Your Sons & Your Daughters Are Beyond.
You can also catch Rosie reading at the Northern Fiction Alliance Winter Showcase at Blackwells Bookshop on 12 December, alongside Reshma Ruia, Rozie Kelly and Ella Ruby, and in April 2025 at the Sleeve Notes performance on Record Store Day (more on that in the New Year).
