Literary places in Liverpool
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature EditorFrom bookshops to poetry performances, the Liverpool literature scene is alive and kicking. The Mersey Sound anthology launched poets Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri into “considerable acclaim and critical fame” in 1967, and Scouse spoken word is still going strong. Regulars are a-plenty, and, at the time of writing, include A Lovely Word, Blast!, dead good poets society (new details: the third Thursday at MerseyMade cafe on Paradise Street), Give Poetry A Chance, Liver Bards and Speakeasy. The Dreaming is now a fixture at The Reader’s new city-centre venue The Reader Bar & Restaurant, and head to The Reader’s Mansion House HQ in south Liverpool’s Calderstones Park for a bookshop and the weekly Poetry Walk. Across the water, there’s Limoncello and The River Poets in Birkenhead, and Testify continues apace in Chester. One of the original members of the Northern Fiction Alliance radical publishing collective, the publishing arm of Dead Ink Books is in the trendy Baltic Triangle while its indie bookshop is up Allerton way on Smithdown Road. For cheap reads, head to Oxfam Bookshop on Bold Street or the expensively renovated Central Library, rubbing shoulders with the Walker Art Gallery and the World Museum. From mainstream to experimental, you’ll find it here.
