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The City’s Multilingual City Poets act as ambassadors for Manchester’s residents, communities, and literature organisations showing the dedication to the importance of literature at a civic level.
The launch of the Multilingual City Poets took place in 2022 at Manchester Poetry Library on International Mother Language Day and included an address from Councillor Luthfur Rahman, Deputy Leader of Manchester City Council at the time, readings from the inaugural three Multilingual City Poets, as well as music from Pringle Gulzar, a tabla player based in Oldham guided by faith and celebrating South Asian culture.
Manchester celebrated International Mother Language Day 2026 by welcoming Jeremy Pak Nelson to join Nóra Blascsók as a Manchester Multilingual City Poet for 2025-2026. The two poets will be in post for a year, working on commissions from the Manchester City of Literature local and international networks.
Jeremy Pak Nelson is a writer and artist from Hong Kong who now calls Manchester home. His work has appeared in Magma Poetry, Interpret, and others, and his climate fiction has been selected as a Grist: Imagine 2200 Editor’s Pick. He was writer-in-residence at UK Space Conference 2025. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and was part of the inaugural Poets of Colour Incubator program. His preoccupations include outdated methods of putting words on paper, folk fiddle, and the game of go.
Nóra Blascsók is a Hungarian poet based in Manchester. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies including Magma, The Rialto, Perverse, Shearsman and Bath Magg among others. Her debut pamphlet ‘<body>of work</body>’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2022.
The City Poet roles carry a civic responsibility, much like conventional Poet Laureate designations, and the appointees are commissioned to produce original poems on behalf of the City. A few of the poems created as part of the project are showcased below. The formats of these commissions vary, sometimes poetry films, written pieces, performances or other.
Commissioned poems have responded to the likes of the 20 year anniversary of Manchester Literature Festival, Festival of Libraries, Manchester Day and World Poetry Day plus other public events, projects and community outreach programmes coordinated by Manchester City of Literature and its partnership network.
Each poet translates the other poets’ writing each time a new poem is written, so all the poems and poetry films are available in a variety of languages.
The launch of the Manchester City Poets
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