School of Night : Poetry & Prose with Polly Clark and Andrew Sclater

Join us for another unusual School of Night as we celebrate the fabulous poet, and now novelist, Polly Clark and discover the poetry of Andrew Sclater.

Polly has won the Eric Gregory Award, and been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. All of her collections, from the intense debut Kiss through the watery Take me With You to the mysterious Farewell My Lovely, are absorbing, astonishing, warm and accomplished works.

It is now two years since she published the award winning poetry pamphlet A Handbook for the Afterlife and in that time she has crafted a different work of art. Her new novel, Larchfield, is steeped in the life and poetry of Auden, and explores two young poets’ battles to maintain a sense of self.

It is a beautiful and haunting work about heroism – the unusual bravery that allows unusual people to go on living; to transcend banality and suffering with the power of their imagination.

“That rarest of rare first novels – a book that actually achieves its great ambition. I found it so immensely readable; it’s brainy, verbally acute and knowing, with an ingenious literary historical premise that it impressively (and artfully) carries off right in front of your eyes. It’s work of considerable talent” – Richard Ford

Polly joins us to read poems and passages of fiction, to discuss Auden and poetry and more -and on stage with her is the wonderful HappenStance  poet Andrew Sclater!

Andrew’s work has appeared in The Dark Horse,  Poetry Review and The Scotsman,  Magma, New Writing Scotland, The Istanbul Review and elsewhere. He is a founder of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine and was shortlisted for the inaugural  Picador Poetry Prize and has won numerous awards including prizes from New Writing North and the Scottish Book Trust. HappenStance is publishing Andrew’s first pamphlet, Dinner at the Blaws-Baxters‘!