Festive poetry and writing workshopAbout this Event
Sam Hickford is a poet and scholar born and bred in Rochdale, and author of two books: Poems Sketched Upon the M60 (2021) and John Clare’s Modern Eco-Poetic Legacy (2026). Join him for a festive poetry reading and workshop.
In the reading, Hickford offers whimsical poems that rhapsodise his love for Rochdale and its surrounding landscape, his botched attempts at off-grid living in Norden, the humorous side of Rochdale Food Bank, the festive season and its joys and anxieties, the flora and fauna of Greater Manchester, and his sustained attempts to reconnect with his son in rural Canada.
In the workshop, Hickford invites the audience to respond to a text. Poems are always attempting to stir us into conversation and response, and some of the most famous poems in English were written this way. In recent decades, Michael Donaghy’s “Cruising to Byzantium” talks back to W.B. Yeats in whimsical irony, Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters addresses Sylvia Plath with confused love, and Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s Swims features poems updating William Wordsworth that his beloved wilderness has become a tourist hotspot. Hickford offers various poems to respond to, and encourages poets to find their own voice by addressing older poets with anger, bewilderment, vengeance, pleasure, or lust.
Event venue
Rochdale Central Library, Smith Street, Rochdale, United Kingdom
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