About this Event
I Found God Alone and He Was Grieving’ by Oliver James Lomax is a collection of sobriety, death, prayer, class, labour and hard-won clarity.
Moving from Picasso’s Guernica in a Mancunian Ford showroom, from Little Lever to Stretford Leisure Centre, from SEND classrooms to meeting rooms, from relapse to repair, Lomax writes with a rare mixture of plain speech and spiritual voltage. These poems are full of coal, clay, canal water, sandstone, cold mornings, old wounds and sudden grace: the poet holding a chicken while a child dances towards the stars, the Sagrada Família looking back towards Blackpool Tower, retrofitted with stone from a Lancashire quarry, and a prayer written at a pit disaster in 1835.
Lomax’s Aftershock asks what it means to be warm when you should be cold, to find serenity when the body screams ACTION, to remain malleable inside a memory, and, most of all, how to live with the clarity of being clean.
This is a book about faith after damage. Not certainty. Not spectacle. Not easy redemption. But attention, service, memory, repair, and the difficult grace of doing the next right thing.
‘When I am drained with fear and grief
I carry in my hands the heart of a child
that could not speak.’
Oliver will be joined by the wonderful poet Tom Branfoot who will be reading from his new amazing new collection ‘Volatile’ (the87press, 2026) - 'This is a book of fierce clarity and aching beauty' – Peter Gizzi
All ticket sales from this event will be donated to the amazing charity Bebe’s Hive, helping fund free creative grief support for children and families navigating unimaginable loss. Bebe's Hive CIC 💛 🐝 - JustGiving
At the event Oliver will also be in conversation with The Aftershock Review editor Max Wallis.
‘A JOLT TO THE MAINSTREAM’ — The Guardian, about Issue One, The Aftershock Review
Welcome to the third Aftershock Poets.
Full-length collections by voices that need to be heard.
Buy:
I Found God Alone and He Was Grieving by Oliver James Lomax | Aftershock Review
I Found God Alone and He Was Grieving by Oliver James Lomax | Waterstones
Volatile by Tom Branfoot — the87press
Oliver James Lomax is a poet, educator, and trustee of the Working-Class Movement Library in Salford. He passionately believes in cultural equality and the power of the arts to enable everyone in society to have a voice. Oliver is a school visiting poet for The Poetry Society and an ambassador and judge for the Poetry By Heart Competition.
In 2025 he won the Los Angeles International Poetry Film Prize for his collaboration with composer Pete Whifield, and has recently been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. His new collection ‘I Found God Alone And He Was Grieving’ is published by The Aftershock Review in November.
Oliver has previously published 5 collections of poetry including ‘Burial of the Cameo’ (2023) – ‘Dammed fine poems, full of emotional resonance and vivid imagery; the world made fresh to the eye and ear.’ – Ian Rankin
In 2019 he released his first spoken word single described by Tom Robinson (BBC 6 Music) as ‘An unholy hybrid of John Cooper Clarke and Mark E Smith. He has finished recording ‘Low Sun - Small Englands’ (Lomax/Whitfield) a classical spoken word album with members of The Halle’, Liverpool Philharmonic, and Manchester Camerata.
‘Poems that dance with originality and are tenderly unafraid of love and belonging.’ – Mark Thomas
‘Beautifully written poems from a unique voice of integrity and spirit.’ – Maxine Peake
Event venue & nearby stays
The Portico Library, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester, United Kingdom
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