The Critic Collective at Manchester Poetry Library

We are excited to offer a six -week workshop series 6th March - 10th April, co-facilitated with Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University for new and emerging critics.

The workshops will aim to challenge expectations about what criticism is and can do but, more importantly, approaching criticism as a creative practise and drawing on art-writing and performance criticism, as well as using poetry as part of reviewing writing, events, recordings and exhibitions, not just books.

The workshops will be run by Manchester Poetry Library and James Varney, with guest workshops from Khairani Barokka, Kit Fan and John McAuliffe from The Centre of New Writing and Carcanet.

• James Varney is a writer, dramaturg and theatre maker. He makes work as a solo artist and collaborates with other artists on music, academic research, and theatre projects. He facilitates creative writing and theatre workshops for all ages, and has made new work for Manchester Literature Festival, Camden People’s Theatre, The Lowry, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester International Festival and First Story. He maintains a blog of cultural criticism at his website, www.jamesvarney.uk, and has previously reviewed for The Stage, Exeunt, and The Real Story.
• Khairani Barokka is a writer, translator, and artist from Jakarta, formerly Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation. In 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards, and she mentors and teaches for various writing, criticism and translation programs. Her work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, and access as translation. Okka’s books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Rope (Nine Arches), and Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (as co-editor; Nine Arches). Her latest book is Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize. amuk is forthcoming from Nine Arches in March, and Annah, Infinite, her first nonfiction book, is forthcoming from Tilted Axis this year.
• Kit Fan is a poet, novelist and critic. He was born and educated in Hong Kong before moving to the UK at 21. His debut novel is Diamond Hill (2021). His first book of poems, Paper Scissors Stone (2011), won the inaugural HKU International Poetry Prize. As Slow As Possible (2018) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and one of the Irish Times Books of the Year. His third poetry collection The Ink Cloud Reader (2023) is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection.

We are looking for 8 writers with an established creative practice, interested in pursuing opportunities in criticism or learning more about critical practise.

Eligible writers will be:

• Over 18
• A poet with a writing practice
• Interested in criticism

Applications close 22nd February at Midnight.

Apply here!

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