Holly Winter Hughes (How to Leave a Body) & Spoz (Playful Poignant Pottymouth)
British Summer Time
at The Heath Bookshop
Tickets
Event Details
We are delighted to announce a double book launch in collaboration with Verve Poetry Press. Holly Winter-Hughes and Spoz will be in conversation and performing from their new books, How to Leave a Body (Holly) and Playful Poignant Pottymouth (Spoz)
They will be talking and performing for about an hour. This will be followed with a book signing.
How to Leave a Body:
This book isn’t about abuse. It’s about untethering. It’s about the disconnect.
When leaving isn’t enough, when staying in your own body feels unsafe. This book is the grab-what-you-can-carry-and-run. It’s all that we can’t hold, and all that we can’t carry.
This book is about all that gets left behind.
Most of all, this book is about healing. This book is written from the body. It’s about writing your way back together again.
“Holly Winter-Hughes’ visceral writing turns the human form inside-out, mapping the contours of trauma, abuse and hard-won resilience. It urges the reader to follow and ‘Breathe deep to the creak of your heartwood’. Darkly imaginative and pearled with fresh phrase-making, these are poems that compel attention and linger.” John McCullough
“Holly’s poetry leaves red shapes on my skin, and teeth marks. Unapologetically incandescent images twist tightly and then open into wide, revelatory spaces. The thin blade of a plastic-handled knife flashes in the dark of cold-roomed poems, but beside my shoulder as I read there is always an older, kinder spirit. It says, ‘Look – this, yes, and this.’ And yet, somehow, the spirit is still singing. I love this collection.” Tom Hirons
Holly Winter-Hughes
Holly Winter-Hughes is especially passionate about using writing to express the stories we hold in our bodies. This comes through in both her poetry and her facilitation. Her work has been commissioned by various organisations including Arvon, Apples & Snakes and Poetry Pharmacy.
She has performed extensively across the UK including at Ledbury Poetry Festival, for Raise the Bar, for Cheltenham Poetry Festival and for the BBC. She is passionate about raising the voices of underrepresented people and as such, is the founder and CEO of The Word Association CIC (who have published over 40 anthologies from marginalised communities with Holly at the helm). She is currently in the final stretch of a Masters degree in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes, and starts her PhD in restoring the body in autumn 2025 at University of Birmingham. Holly is a widely published writer, most recently appearing in Atrium, Clarion, Impossible Archetype, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Lapidus and Tears in the Fence.
Giovanni Esposito, better known as SPOZ, is a poet, writer, performer, musician and (mainly armchair) activist from Birmingham. He works a lot in schools as a poetry and ‘slam poetry’ workshop, and project, facilitator.
He has written and produced plays and musicals for theatre and film and was Birmingham’s Poet Laureate in 2006/7, which was nice. This is his second collection for a 15+ readership and has some older, previously unpublished work as well as lots of new stuff.
‘Clever, moving and packed with sharp humour, Spoz’s new poetry collection delivers refreshing honesty and accessibility whilst still packing a punch. There’s something for everyone.’ Katherine Priddy
‘Spoz’s work has spikey hair, carries a megaphone and wears a f**k the system T-Shirt. And just like Spoz himself, beneath the spikes and the noise, inside it, there sits a thumping heart full of a drive and passion big enough to try and change the world.’ Steven Camden AKA Polarbear
‘I wish we were allowed to read poems like this at school. Spoz is a legend wordsmith and top bloke.’ Lindsey Santoro
A major contribution to English literature’ John Cooper Clarke
Spoz also goes by the longer name of Giovanni Esposito. He is an award winning performance poet, singer / songwriter, film maker, playwright and is the poet-in-residence at Birmingham City FC. He has been seen on BBC and Central Television, has written for and been heard on BBC Radio Four, Radio Five Live, Radio West Midlands, Radio Coventry & Warwickshire and Capital Gold.
Spoz has performed at the Glastonbury Festival, Shambala Festival, Larmer Tree Festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Oxford Literature Festival, Warwick Words Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Wenlock Poetry Festival and Verve Festival of Poetry & Spoken Word.
Spoz was ‘crowned’ Birmingham’s eleventh poet laureate in October 2006. He continues to work extensively in schools, lifting the appeal of writing and performing poetry to hitherto, unseen heights.
