Look How Alive - Book Launch *POSTPONED*

Join Write Bloody UK for the debut poetry book launch of Look How Alive by Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith, with special guest Iain Whiteley.

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About this event

DINA is an independent, inclusive and innovative art organisation for Sheffield and beyond and we are delighted to be hosting a free poetry evening to celebrate the launch of Look How Alive, the day after it's release.

Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith

Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith is a poet and artist based in Rotherham and Oxford. She is a member of The Writing Squad and Hive’s Poetry Collective. Lauren's work has been published in several anthologies including She Will Soar (Pan Macmillan 2020). Her debut pamphlet Ugly Bird won the 2020 New Poets Prize. She won the Foyle Young Poets of the Year award in 2019 and was highly commended in the Young Northern Writers' award. Lauren has performed at various events and festivals, including Ledbury Poetry Festival, Kendal Poetry Festival and Off the Shelf Festival of Words. She studies English and French at Oxford University.

At times gut wrenching, at times ecstatic and defiant, Look How Alive is filled with vibrant poems, pulsing with the joy and the pain of living. Navigating love and loss, battles with depression, Alpine landscapes and buzzing cityscapes, Hollingsworth-Smith's debut book has a heartbeat.

Books will be available for signing and purchase at the event, or you can pre-order 

Also reading from his debut collection Ping! will be fellow WBUK author Iain Whiteley.

Iain Whiteley

Iain has worked as a writer for advertising agencies, design agencies and museums for the best part of twenty years. In 2016, he drunk-bought a "How to Write Poetry" class online and hasn’t looked back. Since then, Iain has completed an MA in linguistics and studied at The Poetry School, The Faber Academy and The Seamus Heaney Centre. Iain's debut collection Ping! features poems that debuted in The North magazine. It was long-listed for the 2021 Welsh Poetry Book Awards.

Ping! is a glittering xennial trip through Glasgow tenements, Lancashire bus stations and London theatres, leaping into the sea and beyond. In these poems, party queens, builders and greasy advertising execs ride shotgun with 1970s videogames, digital nomads and linguistic algorithms to tackle themes such as capitalism, kinship, politics and otherness. From kitchen sink drama to international terror, and from the death of the high street to the rise of AI, these are poignant-yet-playful poems for a post-pandemic world. Witty, tart and peculiarly philosophical, Ping! is the sound of a millennium gatecrashing its 21st birthday party – then passing out in the kitchen.

Doors at 7pm! Food & drinks available at the bar.