Fantastically, amazingly This Box Is Yours was finally launched and celebrated with a bash at Common in the Northern Quarter on 12th August. This following a weekend of folding, packing and assembling (contents of) to create what we hope (know!) is a unique collection of work from 15 up-and-coming Manchester artists. One of the Box's three editors I have witnessed, even initiated, a fair few arguments and a lot of drinking along the way. My own contribution to the Box is A Batson's Guide to Manchester and here Batson and Bateman relay the Manchester pub-crawl section to a largely bemused audience. I don't think it made many people's night but hopefully the reading didn't detract too much from it either. Overall it was a great and proud occasion and the perfect chance to catch up with literary friends from far and wide. 


Photo by James.  

I'm not a prolific reader-outer but it was nice to be asked to read on gorgeous St Anne's Square in a little tent by Comma Press this summer. I decided to read an extended bit of Batson - a football commentary by two old timers that incorporates salacious asides on a date our hero and his Daisy are undertaking at the very same game. It was quite tough to do on my own - two voices, baffled faces just visible behind a sheen of pure Manc weather - but I got there; Box amigos and Licky in support, feeding me M&S lagers, before a session in the Briton's as poetry returned to sooth and balm this worthy event.