This event will be first broadcast at 7.30pm on Thursday 22 April 2021 and available to watch for 7 days. The event will be pre-recorded and captioned.

‘Natalie Diaz is a poet who calls out to us in so many ways, who reaches out to embrace her lover, her people, and her country.’ Her most recent collection Postcolonial Love Poem explores body and land as sites of desire and longing, but also pain and erasure. It was shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Forward Prize in Poetry. Born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado river, Natalie is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She has received fellowships from The MacArthur Foundation, the Lannan Literary Foundation, the Native Arts Council Foundation, and Princeton University and was recently appointed to Academy of American Poets.

In a new commission written especially for Manchester Literature Festival, Natalie will present Radixes and Formations: a series of poetic sensualities exploring the words ‘origin’, ‘migration’, ‘freedom’ and ‘love’. A deeply lyrical poet, she will create linguistic maps of these words in English and Mojave, diving deep into their roots and the ways in which they echo in physical connection.

Natalie will perform her new poems for the first time, followed by a conversation about her work with poet Mary Jean Chan. Mary Jean is the author of Flèche, which was shortlisted for multiple awards and won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry. This is one of a series of New Commissions supported by an award from the DCMS Culture Recovery Fund and presented in partnership with the Centre for New Writing and Creative Manchester.

Tickets for this event are available on a Pay What You Can £6 / £12 / £20 basis. There are also a number of Free tickets available for those that need them.