Culture Matters are proud to present a live poetry triple-header with performances from Al Hutchins, Fran Lock, and Bobby Parker.
Described by Stewart Lee as a “howling faggot-and pea-fuelled visionary”, Al Hutchins is a West Midlands poet performing ‘stuff’ since 1997: his rhythm, holler and tune-mongering thing, The Courtesy Group has been lauded by the likes of John Peel, Stuart Maconie and John Cooper Clarke. His poetry and fiction are published by New River Press, Eccentric City, Culture Matters and Tindal Street Press.
His latest volume is Rebel Admin (Culture Matters, 2023). It’s great! But don’t take our word for it. Novelist Jim Crace said:
“I’m immersing myself in Rebel Admin. Present tense – because I know I’ll have to keep company with these pieces for quite a while before I discover all their pleasures.
Readers will get the rhythms and the vocab play at once, but meaning is a very slow reveal. In fact, I’m tempted to think that the strength of the poems -or is that lyrics?- is their “freedom from meaning.
It’s sort of speaking in tongues and in a state of unfettered, troubled phrenzy. These are caverns measureless to man, rather than stately pleasure domes. Well, I’ve found them fascinating. And unique.”
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Fran Lock is the author of numerous chapbooks and fourteen poetry collections. Her most recent collections are Hyena! (Poetry Bus Press, 2023), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023 and for the PEN Heaney Prize 2024, and ‘a disgusting lie’: further adventures through the neoliberal hell-mouth (Pamenar Press, 2023). Spectres // Defectors /// No Respecters, an omnibus of three previous titles, with selected new material was published by Culture Matters in late 2024. Her most recent pamphlet is The New Herbal (Blueprint Press, 2024), and Vulgar Errors/ Feral Subjects, a collection of essays exploring feral subjectivity through the lens of the medieval bestiary, was published by Out-Spoken Press last year. Fran was the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at Cambridge University 2022-2023, and is a Commissioning Editor and Maid of All Work at radical arts and culture cooperative Culture Matters. She lives in Kent with her sassy American bully, Luna.
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Bobby Parker is a self-taught writer and visual artist who grew up and currently lives in Kidderminster, West Midlands. Published widely in magazines in print and on-line, his debut poetry collection Blue Movie (Nine Arches Press) was published in 2014, followed by Working Class Voodoo (Offord Road Books) in 2018, and Honey Monster (Broken Sleep Books) in 2022. Longing is the Grace was published by Tangerine Press in 2023 as part of the Walking Wounded series. A new collection is eagerly anticipated from Sacred Parasite in 2025.
Join us for readings from these three brilliantly strange and strangely brilliant poets. The event is free, but books will be available to buy, and donations are very much welcome. Culture Matters is an artist’s co-op, run on a voluntary basis. We receive no funding, and all profits from our live events go to support the causes we care about and our on-going cultural struggle for a fairer society. All are welcome. We can’t wait to see you!