Poetry Launch: Nightlight, by Mark Ward, with Peter Scalpello and Serge Neptune

Please join us on the 28th of April to celebrate the launch of Nightlight, Mark Ward's much anticipated first collection. Nightlight represents a striking new voice in Irish poetry, traversing dark streets, clubs, and half-illuminated bodies as it addresses sexuality, mental health, and the intricacies of relationships with a fresh eye and a commanding voice; erotic, visceral, and powerfully attuned to queer history, this is a remarkable collection. Mark will be joined by Peter Scalpello, the author of the incredible collection Limbic, and Serge ♆ Neptune, author of These Queer Merboys. Please arrive at The Common Press from 7 pm. Books by all of the poets will be available to purchase on the night.

In Nightlight, Mark Ward gives us poems that are closely attuned to the body, to physical encounter, to the way history exists inside and beyond us. Ward’s poems sing from the testimony of memory, decipher its evidences, and trace its passage, both as it enters us and as it leaves. These lyrics are unashamed and visceral ~ Seán Hewitt. In this powerful, energetic collection, the reader is asked to witness the performances, loving, erotic, fearful, which the body must endure ~ Andrew McMillan.

Mark Ward is the author of the collection Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2023) and four chapbooks: Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018), Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020), the prose/haiku/hybrid HIKE (Bear Creek Press, 2022) and the Choose Your Own Adventure sonnet, Faultlines (voidspace, online 2022/print 2023). He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its sixth year. Twitter: @dogwithoutlegs Peter Scalpello is a queer poet and therapist from Glasgow. Their work has appeared in Five Dials, Granta, The London Magazine and the New York Times, among other publications. Peter's first collection, Limbic, is published by Cipher Press. Twitter @p_scalpello. Serge ♆ Neptune has been called ‘the little merman of British poetry’. His first pamphlet is These Queer Merboys, published with Broken Sleep. His work has appeared in The Rialto, Magma, The North, Propel magazine, Fourteen Poems, Banshee, the Queer Life Queer Love anthology, and more.