Join us at Beeston Library for the launch of the latest two Five Leaves New Poetry pamphlets, supported as ever by a few of the earlier pamphleteers.

Mae by Maria Berry is set in 1989. The poems follow Mae, a Romany girl whose mother has left her. She lives in lowrise flats on a council estate, in informal kinship care. The state refuses to recognize her grandmother’s legal right to be her guardian. Her mother can’t be found and the shadow of Child Protection Services looms large. A hostile, right-wing government brands her community as outcasts and local authorities look away. Police harass their community, estate neighbours reject them. Mae’s family has to fight just to stay together.

Ezra James Fiddimore’s poems in Man Car examine the complexities of transitioning from female to male, and navigate the conundrum that the role of ‘trans man’ is not clearly located within our current landscape. Yet Man Car drives persistently, often joyfully, through that landscape, drawing on Judith Butler’s queer theory of gender as performance to define the role of just one trans man. In that journey Fiddimore discovers the pleasure to be found in travelling, and in colouring outside the lines.

A bar will be provided by the library.

Tickets £4, booking through the Inspire website (not yet available, check back here for updates)