News
Release, January 2003
An Evening with Jackie Kay
The Place Arts Centre,
Award-winning
poet, dramatist and novelist Jackie Kay will be reading at The Place Arts
Centre, Letchworth Garden City as part of the town’s centenary celebrations. Jackie Kay has written a string of highly regarded
novels and poetry books. Her collection, The Adoption Papers (Bloodaxe,
1991) won a Scottish Arts Council
Book Award and a commendation by the Forward Prize judges. Other
Lovers, (1993), won a Somerset
Maugham Award, and her first novel, Trumpet
(Picador 1998), won the Guardian Fiction Prize. She has published two books of
poetry for children and has written widely for stage and television. Her most recent works are Why Don't You Stop
Talking (2002), a collection of short stories; and the novel, Strawgirl
(2002).
Jackie
Kay was born in
Her
first book, The Adoption Papers, deals with an adopted child's search
for a cultural identity and is told through three different voices: an adoptive
mother, a birth mother and a daughter.
(over - )
The
poems in Other Lovers explore the role and power of language, inspired
and influenced by the history of Afro-Caribbean people, the story of a search
for identity grounded in the experience of slavery. The collection includes a
sequence of poems about the blues-singer Bessie Smith.
Her first novel, Trumpet, was inspired by the life of musician Billy
Tipton, the novel tells the story of Scottish jazz trumpeter Joss Moody whose
death revealed that he was, in fact, a woman. Kay develops the narrative
through the voices of Moody's wife, his adopted son and a journalist from a tabloid
newspaper.
An intimate,
engaging and energetic reader, the evening promises to be an extraordinary
occasion in the Garden City calendar of centenary events.
The
Jackie Kay reading has been organised by the Garden City’s poetry group – Poetry
I.D, and funded by the
For more information call Poetry I.D
on 01462 674612 or email cashcroft@lasa.org.uk
POETRY I.D