ArtsFest Online: Liz Berry and Tom Hicks in conversation, hosted by Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Join poet Liz Berry and artist Tom Hicks (Black Country Type) in live conversation about their respective practices and forthcoming collaboration, followed by Q&A. Hosted by Black Country writer Kerry Hadley-Pryce this talk was recorded on 24th June 2020. Liz Berry was born in the Black Country and now lives in Birmingham. Her first book of poems, Black Country (Chatto 2014), described as a ‘sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands’ (Guardian) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, received a Somerset Maugham Award and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. Her pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto, 2018) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet choice and the title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018. Liz is a patron of Writing West Midlands and works as a tutor for organisations including the Arvon Foundation and The Poetry School. Black Country Type is Tom Hicks; an artist, writer and curator from Kingswinford. Black Country Type is an ongoing photographic project. In this series of images he applies his unique aesthetic to the region, focusing on words, typography, handmade lettering and signs. He also photographs ‘types’ of architectural features, objects and the post-industrial landscape of the area. Kerry Hadley-Pryce was born in the Black Country. She worked nights in a Wolverhampton petrol station before becoming a secondary school teacher. She wrote her first novel, The Black Country, whilst studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, for which she gained a distinction and was awarded the Michael Schmidt Prize for Outstanding Achievement 2013–14. She is currently a PhD student there, researching Psychogeography and Black Country Writing. Gamble is her second novel.