BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Housmans Bookshop - ECPv6.17.4.1//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://housmans.com X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Housmans Bookshop REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20260329T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20261025T010000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20270328T010000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20271031T010000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260801T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260801T220000 DTSTAMP:20260629T130948Z CREATED:20260629T122120Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260629T130948Z UID:80047-1785610800-1785621600@housmans.com SUMMARY:HOUSMANS READING SERIES: Valerie Hsiung with Verity Spott\, Andrea Brady and others DESCRIPTION:We are delighted to welcome the incredible Valerie Hsiung to Housmans\, visiting us from the mountains of Colorado in USA. Joining her we have some of the finest poets working in Britain today. \n\n\n\nWe will be celebrating Valerie’s latest book\, The pedestrian: a poet’s novel\, a body\, a house\, where childhood ungrieved meets the horror of displacement. \n\n\n\nEmerging from the dark ecology between lullaby and ghost story\, The pedestrian meanders down a labyrinth of divinatory time where crimes demand a more defective detective. To conjure the source of this text’s trauma\, the poet becomes a ritual detective\, tracing the wound by its shadow. Meaning emerges through distortion and echo—courting what cannot be seen head-on to create a haunted grammar of grief. An ill pastoral of displacement\, The pedestrian turns domestic spaces into underworlds\, the body of the exiled child into a prophetic threshold—it listens as much as it speaks\, attuned to forces beyond itself. \n\n\n\nPRAISE: \n\n\n\nWhy are some people’s pores open in their aloneness? Valerie Hsiung asks\, in this\, the most—maybe only—honest biography I’ve ever read. Is it a biography? It is the consequence of a porousness (i.e. of being perforated) that seems to be the consequence\, in turn\, of being made to live the impossible state of perpetual estrangement as self-enchantment\, the impermanent state of metamorphosis as permanence. Hsiung’s writing has accompanied and seen me through so many incarnations; I am ready for what The pedestrian will make of me—will make of all of us—next. \n\n\n\n-Brandon Shimoda \n\n\n\nThe pedestrian is intimate as an ultrasound of the past\, revealing a many-chambered organ haunted by someones\, somethings and others. A cross between medium and technician\, Valerie Hsiung meticulously probes the uncanny gap between before and after with a language devised for this purpose and no other. Precise\, unflinching and subtle\, Hsiung’s sentences shift to meet the unspeakable where it lives—within. \n\n\n\n-Anne de Marcken \n\n\n\nSilky grief\, kinetic gaps and dislocations\, and a potent\, trance-like narration that brushes and brushes against the inarticulable. Valerie Hsiung’s The pedestrian is entirely outside of category\, awakening nerves long dormant through its gorgeous obliquity\, its charge of fresh music. The hypnosis is plainly startling\, entangling the reader and guiding her into the most otherworldly of spaces: the other worlds rushing forth\, ungovernable\, inside this one. In place of the usual tired meanings comes the largesse of mystery and deeper\, stranger voices. The pedestrian is an antidote ampule to memory’s cliches. No\, not just memory’s cliches—to any force that conspires to sever the dreaming from the waking. \n\n\n\n-Jenny Xie \n\n\n\nThe pedestrian is a map to a terrain of shards and shadows. While reading it\, I felt lost only to the land of the normative\, a lush fugitivity. I traveled far with\, because of\, and in this book. Hsiung trusts in the politics of decomposition\, making syntaxes that have been distorted by grief\, and thus sharpened to what cannot be colonially extracted. Writers like this know that grammar\, vocabulary\, and the sentence itself are haunted\, so they write not to exorcise or cure this condition of its ghosts\, but to make a place for them to live\, a place they belong. \n\n\n\n– Johanna Hedva \n\n\n\nTwo is a confounding number\, asserting\, through its adjacency to one\, the split from which consciousness proceeds. In the third person\, Valerie establishes a self in two parts\, living two lives\, witnessing in memory an architecture of diasporic remembrance at odds with Proustian time. The past in The pedestrian is cellular—replicated\, split\, migrated— its membranes stretched by Valerie’s devoted prose\, its unsentimental attunement to the fray of love and loss. She renders what’s closest—a mother\, a house\, a child—radically extimate. An inversion inviting\, at the turn of every mundane gesture\, history’s ravenous ghost (eating is always a reminder of hunger). Legs splayed open\, birthing herself with each new paragraph\, She is a revelation. She shows how perfect the sentence can be as a place to keep the wound active. A staggering act of containment enabling us to remain in touch with the break\, and to find\, in the split\, all of life’s surplus. \n\n\n\n-Mirene Arsanios \n\n\n\nOUR POETS: \n\n\n\nAmelia Zhou is a writer and researcher. Her book Repose\, which interweaves poems\, fiction\, and lyric essay\, was awarded the 2022 Wendy’s Subway Book Prize and published in 2024. She is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Cambridge\, where her research examines the political-aesthetic role of photographic images and tropes in predominantly Anglophone life narratives from the 1970s to the present. She is also currently the Emerging Critics Fellow at the Sydney Review of Books. Born and raised in Sydney\, she lives in London.  \n\n\n\nAzad Ashim Sharma is a writer and publisher based in South London. He is the director of the87press. His work includes Against the Frame (Broken Sleep Books\, 2022) and Ergastulum (Broken Sleep Books\, 2022). His work has featured in publications such as the Asian American Writers Workshop\, Stand Magazine\, Gutter Magazine\, the journal Social and Health Sciences\, SPAMzine\, MIR Online\, and Wasafiri. He is a Chase-funded PhD Candidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College\, University of London. He is the recipient of the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Book Award 2023. He lives in London.  \n\n\n\nVerity Spott is a poet\, blogger\, teacher\, carer and musician from Brighton\, England\, and publisher of the independent publishing house Iodine Press. Verity’s books include Click Away Close Door Say (Contraband\, 2017)\, Prayers Manifestos Bravery (Pilot Press\, 2018)\, Hopelessness (The 87 Press\, 2020)\, Songs of the Morning (slub\, 2023) and The North Road Songbook (Pilot Press\, 2024). Since 2006\, Spott has run the monthly poetry and performance event Horseplay in Brighton. \n\n\n\nAndrea Brady is an American poet and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of eight books of poetry including\, Desiring Machines\, The Blue Split Compartments\, The Strong Room\, and Cut from the Rushes. She has performed in Europe\, Canada\, the US\, Lebanon\, and Chile\, and has been invited to speak about poetry by the British Academy\, British Council\, the BBC\, the Arts Council\, and the Poetry Society. Her work has been translated into numerous languages\, including French\, German\, and Croatian. \n\n\n\nGhazal Mosadeq is a poet\, editor and translator. She is the founder of Pamenar Press\, an independent publisher of poetry\, translation\, hybrid and critical writing. Her own work has been published by Sheirsman\, Fence\, Arc Poetry\, Firmament\, Asymptote\, Modern Poetry In Translation and Ugly Duckling Presse (forthcoming)\, among others. She is a member of the editorial advisory board for the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. \n\n\n\nValerie Hsiung is a poet who writes between worlds\, where language meets ritual and abolition meets afterlife. Drawing on diasporic\, ecological\, and metaphysical inquiry\, her books dissolve the borders of poetry\, prose\, performance and philosophy into a single listening body. She is the author of eight full-length books\, including The pedestrian (Nightboat Books)\, The Naif (Ugly Duckling Presse)\, The only name we can call it now is not its only name (Counterpath)\, To love an artist (Essay Press)\, and outside voices\, please (CSU). Recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Camargo Foundation and Lighthouse Works as well as grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts and PEN America\, she teaches writing at the limits of language at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. Her ceremonial work and pedagogy has been studied by researchers on the subject of emancipatory practices including Sophie Orlando. Born to Chinese-Taiwanese immigrants in Cincinnati\, Ohio\, she now lives in the foothills of Colorado. \n\n\n\nPlease note this is a free event but please do book ahead. You can also reserve a copy of the book. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/housmans-reading-series-valerie-hsiung-with-verity-spott-andrea-brady-and-others/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Poetry-Series-Valerie-.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260807T183000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260807T210000 DTSTAMP:20260804T135553Z CREATED:20260610T150512Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T135553Z UID:79449-1786127400-1786136400@housmans.com SUMMARY:POETRY READING: ELLEN RENTON LAUNCHES 'YOU AND YOURS' DESCRIPTION:Join us for an evening of poetry to mark the launch of Ellen Renton’s new pamphlet.\n\n\n\nYou and Yours: \n\n\n\nSwinging across timelines and from the mundane to the surreal\, You and Yours is a study in grief: how it exists beyond seismic losses in the stories we inherit\, in shifting friendships\, and in uncertain landscapes. These poems celebrate the self as a malleable entity under the influence of all the lives it encounters\, and balance the pain that characterises the loss of a profound connection with the wonder of having it in the first place. \n\n\n\nAbout Ellen Renton: \n\n\n\nEllen Renton is a writer from Edinburgh. Her work has been published in journals including Poetry London\, Gutter\, and Magma\, and she released her debut pamphlet An Eye For An Eye For An Eye with Stewed Rhubarb Press. Her work in theatre has included the one-woman show Within Sight (2020)\, Disciples (2023)\, and PALS (in development in 2026). She has released an EP and the album My Noise is Nothing with electronic musician Lord of the Isles. She holds an MA in Creative Writing: Poetry from the University of East Anglia. \n\n\n\nPlease note this is an externally organised event. Any inquires should be made to: ellenmrenton@hotmail.co.uk \n\n\n\nTICKETS: \n\n\nRegister on Eventbrite\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/poetry-reading-ellen-renton-launches-you-and-yours/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/image-1.webp END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260811T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260811T210000 DTSTAMP:20260803T112601Z CREATED:20260803T112558Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260803T112601Z UID:81097-1786474800-1786482000@housmans.com SUMMARY:Circadian Radio DESCRIPTION:Circadian Radio is a night of performances by poets and writers\n\n\n\n★ The night features performances by: Hesse K\, Francis Jones\, Sara Mostafa\, Oisín Roberts\, Jordan Minga\, Phoebe Eccles\, Maya Uppal\, Will Aghoghogbe and open mic slots ★ \n\n\n\nDuring the evening\, the performances are offered in solidarity with our dear friend\, a writer who is fundraising anonymously for combined visa and top surgery costs. As anonymous fundraisers often slip to the back of people’s mind\, this event has been organised by their friends to encourage donations to their gofundme.   \n\n\n\nThere will be a donations based bar with both soft and alcoholic drinks at the venue.  \n\n\n\nThe Line Up: \n\n\n\nHesse K \n\n\n\nFrancis Jones \n\n\n\nSara Mostafa \n\n\n\nOisín Roberts \n\n\n\nJordan Minga  \n\n\n\nPhoebe Eccles  \n\n\n\nMaya Uppal \n\n\n\nWill Aghoghogbe \n\n\n\n& Open Mic  \n\n\n\nPlease note this is externally organised event. Any queries should be addressed to mayamcdowelluppal@gmail.com \n\n\n\nBook tickets here: \n\n\n\nhttps://www.outsavvy.com/event/38334/circadian-radio \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/circadian-radio/ CATEGORIES:In Store ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/7ae72264-43d5-405f-b40b-85d1b349be0b.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260815T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260815T210000 DTSTAMP:20260727T151113Z CREATED:20260727T151111Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260727T151113Z UID:80672-1786820400-1786827600@housmans.com SUMMARY:POETRY SERIES: JOEY FRANCES DESCRIPTION:For our next poetry evening we welcome to London (the really very special poet) Joey Frances\, for the London launch of his new chapbook\, many beautiful acquaintances. Joining him we welcome back Imogen Cassels\, Robert Kiely and Danny Hayward. \n\n\n\nOUR POETS: \n\n\n\nBiography:\n\n\n\nJoey Frances is a poet\, musician\, poetry organiser & teacher based in Manchester. He co-organises the reading series Peter Barlow’s Cigarette\, and a bi-weekly poetry reading group. All his previous poems can be read at pxxtry.com. \n\n\n\nImogen Cassels is the author of Silk Work (Prototype\, 2025) and the pamphlets Peach machine (The Last Books\, 2025)\, Chesapeake (Distance No Object\, 2021)\, VOSS (Legitimate Snack / Broken Sleep\, 2020)\, Arcades (Sad Press\, 2018) and Mother\, beautiful things (Face Press\, 2017). She lives in London. \n\n\n\nRobert Kiely is a writer and editor currently based in London. He was born in Co. Cork\, Ireland. He has published three collections of poetry and a book of literary criticism. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Cambridge Literary Review and the LA Review of Books. \n\n\n\nDanny Hayward is a poet and critic. His books of criticism include Wound Building: Dispatches from the Latest Disasters in UK Poetry (2021) and Training Exercises (2024) and his most recent volume of poetry is It Was Like Watching (The Last Books\,2026). He runs the archive of out-of-print and inaccessible/DIY poetry Free Trials http://www.pxxtry.com\, where much of his own work is freely available. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/poetry-series-joey-frances/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Poetry-Series5.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260818T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260818T203000 DTSTAMP:20260814T125334Z CREATED:20260503T145005Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260814T125334Z UID:78529-1787079600-1787085000@housmans.com SUMMARY:[CANCELLED] 'FLAMBOYANCE' WITH JACK PARLETT IN CONVERSATION WITH PETER SCALPELLO DESCRIPTION:We are sorry to announce that this event has been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances – all existing ticketholders will be contacted\n\n\n\nJACK PARLETT AND CELEBRATED POET PETER SCALPELLO DISCUSS ‘FLAMBOYANCE’ AND HOW IT IGNITES EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES\, FROM ART AND ENTERTAINMENT TO RITUAL AND PROTEST. \n\n\n\nFlamboyance is Jack Parlett’s follow up to his acclaimed Fire Island (A Housmans bestseller of 2022). This new book has all the qualities one has come to expect of Jack’s work; big hearted and erudite in equal measure. \n\n\n\nFlamboyance ignites every aspect of our lives\, from art and entertainment to ritual and protest. The word conjures exuberance and unashamed passion; in thought\, expression and dress. Yet historically the term ‘flamboyant’ has been reserved for the over-the-top and the outré\, invoked at times as a pejorative innuendo or worse. \n\n\n\nIn his fascinating new book\, Jack Parlett argues for its value as an empowering and creative force\, illuminating the ways in which flamboyance is a fundamental aspect of human conduct that both marks and transcends difference. \n\n\n\nTaking in an eclectic array of examples\, from Gothic architecture to the orange flowers of Dungeness\, and populated by figures such as Oscar Wilde\, James Baldwin\, Elton John\, Amy Winehouse\, Lil Nas X and Chappell Roan\, this is a book about flamboyant art and the art of flamboyance. And having both aspired to it and rejected it\, Jack recounts his personal relationship to flamboyance while also finding new meanings of the word\, exploring its surprises and contradictions\, and reconnecting with its radical power. \n\n\n\nOUR SPEAKERS: \n\n\n\nJack Parlett is the author of three books: The Poetics of Cruising: Queer Visual Culture from Whitman to Grindr (a monograph with University of Minnesota Press)\, Same Blue\, Different You (a poetry pamphlet with Broken Sleep Books)\, and Fire Island: A Queer History (Granta)\, which was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by the New Yorker and shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize 2023. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker\, Document Journal\, BBC Culture\, Boston Review\, Literary Hub and Poetry London. \n\n\n\nPeter Scalpello is a writer and psychotherapist from Glasgow\, based in London. Their second book\, Mirrorstage\, was published this year with Cipher Press. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-flamboyance-with-jack-parlett/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/91i4Plth9zL._SL1500_.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260819T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260819T210000 DTSTAMP:20260807T133650Z CREATED:20260805T131235Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260807T133650Z UID:81206-1787166000-1787173200@housmans.com SUMMARY:SOLD OUT! HOUSMANS READING SERIES: Robert Glück DESCRIPTION:PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT. The waiting list for this event is now also full. \n\n\n\nHousmans are beyond honoured\, and slightly delightedly flabbergasted\, to welcome the legendary writer Robert Glück to the shop for a reading. Robert\, or Bob\, is one of the most important writers working in the world today\, in a career that spans many decades\, poetry and cutting edge fiction; his work has been of profound importance to the contemporary queer literary landscape. \n\n\n\nReading alongside Bob we’ve some of the most exciting younger writers working in London today: Oisín Roberts\, JD Howse and Luke Roberts. \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nTHIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. To avoid disappointment\, please do not arrive without a valid ticket. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/housmans-reading-series-robert-gluck/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Poetry-Series12.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260822T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260822T210000 DTSTAMP:20260730T201249Z CREATED:20260729T161718Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260730T201249Z UID:80743-1787425200-1787432400@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: MILKING MOTHER EARTH: Fragments of an Investigation by Kaisa Saarinen DESCRIPTION:Come and celebrate the first pamphlet from Gauze Bonnet Press!\n\n\n\nThis pamphlet is a free-wheeling interdisciplinary exploration of rubber\, taking readers from Bangkok fetish bars to smallholder plantations in Vietnam\, looking through history from European colonisation of the homelands of latex to Victorian British moral panics about sex toys made from the material. Kaisa interweaves academic research with first hand accounts from her research trips and poetry both by herself and and others.  \n\n\n\nThroughout this journey\, she contemplates the feminised life of rubber. She speaks to women in the industry\, considers the history of rubber dildos\, finds womanhood in the poems of Vietnamese rubber laborers\, and wonders what it means to milk mother earth. \n\n\n\nThis work is born out of notes from her ongoing research project and artistic collaboration with Bart Seng Wen Long\, Rubber Dreams of its Lifetime. \n\n\n\nKaisa Saarinen is a former feral farmgirl based in London. She writes poetry\, fiction and non-fiction\, often blending them together in hybrid forms. Her books include the novel Weather Underwater (2023)\, and short-form collections Maitonaut (2024) and Voideuse (2022). In close collaboration with Bart Seng Wen Long\, she is leading the research-based art project Rubber Dreams of its Lifetime.’ \n\n\n\nReading and performing alongside Kaisa we have: \n\n\n\nBart Seng Wen LongCat Feliciano& Gabrielle Sicam \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, but please RSVP below! \n\n\n\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-milking-mother-earth-fragments-of-an-investigation-by-kaisa-saarinen/ CATEGORIES:Book Talk,Feminist event,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/IMG_3537-1.jpeg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260829T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260829T210000 DTSTAMP:20260805T113037Z CREATED:20260804T165202Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260805T113037Z UID:81160-1788030000-1788037200@housmans.com SUMMARY:HOUSMANS POETRY SERIES: VERITY SPOTT DESCRIPTION:* \n\n\n\nThe morning approaches. It engulfs everything\, filling the precincts and flooding the valley with sound. The sky and the air seem to be speaking\, reporting every moment. The hearts are lit up and flee. \n\n\n\nOne night\, I rose\, and retreated into the dream. A vehicle welcomed the cold\, and quietly rose. Inside the dream you were floating cut off\, down along the coast. I thundered for your name. \n\n\n\n* \n\n\n\nWe are delighted to welcome the seminal poet Verity Spott to Housmans for the launch of a new collection of poetry: Good Morning\, published by Pilot Press. \n\n\n\nReading alongside Verity we’ve got Laurel Moore and Naomi Weber. \n\n\n\nThis is a free event but please do book ahead to avoid disappointment. Copies of the book can also reserved through the ticket portal. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/housmans-poetry-series-verity-spott/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Poetry-Series-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260904T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260904T203000 DTSTAMP:20260909T100625Z CREATED:20260413T154853Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260909T100625Z UID:77658-1788548400-1788553800@housmans.com SUMMARY:Book Launch: Liquid Reflections with Liliane Lijn DESCRIPTION:We are profoundly honored to be hosting the paperback launch for a memoir by one the world’s greatest living artists\, the sculptor Liliane Lijn\, who will be joined in conversation by leading art writer Jennifer Higgie.\n\n\n\nPhoto credit: Clay Perry \n\n\n\nLiliane Lijn is an artist who needs little introduction. Her stirring\, often ostentatious and always poetic works are dotted throughout the British urban landscape\, and overseas. Regular visitors to Housmans will have no doubt seen her recent piece Temenos just up the road from us\, near Granary Square. \n\n\n\nWe will host Liliane September 4th to launch the paperback edition of her brilliant bildungsroman Liquid Reflections. The book begins in 1958 with the talented and fearless Liliane Lijn leaving her family home and moving to Paris alone to become an artist. Once there\, she found an art world filled with the wild energy of creative revolution – peopled and controlled almost entirely by men. In the years that followed\, Lijn built a life for herself in the city. She embraced the hectic bohemian spirit of the Left Bank. She befriended artists\, painters\, poets\, gallerists and revolutionaries\, as the late Surrealists gave way to a burgeoning Pop Art movement. She had disastrous love affairs with difficult men. She experimented boldly\, creating ground-breaking sculptures with light\, text and movement. And as her profile steadily grew\, she was told again and again that there are no great women artists: ‘There never have been.’ \n\n\n\nLiquid Reflections is her memoir of these years of experiment and adventure – years when Lijn was constantly in motion\, from Paris to New York to Venice to Athens\, from paper and canvas to wax and Perspex to oil and water. In love\, she became pregnant but rebelled against the idea that a woman could not be both a great artist and a mother. And she sought – and found – radical pleasure in the act of creative expression and in the living\, sensuous world around her. \n\n\n\nBased on personal diaries from the time\, this is a riveting and revelatory account of a singular coming of age: a glittering portrait of the artist as a young woman. \n\n\n\n‘I wrote LIQUID REFLECTIONS because I wanted to take my readers on the journey I made to become an artist. It’s the story of an idealistic\, inspired young woman who refuses to accept the prejudices of her time. Becoming an artist was also a search for my own identity…’ — Liliane Lijn \n\n\n\nLiliane will be conversation with the art writer Jennifer Higgie\, author of numerous books\, her most recent being The Other Side: A Journey into Women\, Art and the Spirit World\, the first major work of art history to focus on women artists and their engagement with the spirit world. \n\n\n\nThis is going to be an extremely special event and we are delighted to be hosting it. Please do book a ticket in advance to avoid disappointment on the night. \n\n\n\nLiliane and Jennifer will talk for around 45 minutes to an hour\, followed by an open discussion with the audience. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-liquid-reflections-with-liliane-lijn/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,Book Talk,In Store ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/webp:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/9781405967471-jacket-large.webp END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260905T183000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260905T203000 DTSTAMP:20260825T131709Z CREATED:20260825T131707Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260825T131709Z UID:81924-1788633000-1788640200@housmans.com SUMMARY:PANEL: Noisy Business: Thought Daughters DESCRIPTION:What’s Noisy Business? \n\n\n\n​The brainchild of best friends and frequent chatty patties\, Erène Bennett and Haaniyah Awale Angus\, Noisy Business is a bimonthly roundtable series born out of our desire to bring the digital world offline. \n\n\n\n​We don’t think that Noisy alone can fix the gaping issues within cultural commentary\, but we do believe that conversations with one another in real life are a necessary first step. Erène and I often talk about various discourses\, revelling in how communicating in person can make our disagreements\, frustrations\, and complex beliefs (read: complex\, not bigoted) about topics such as feminism\, AI\, body image\, film criticism\, and grief so much easier to navigate. \n\n\n\n​And how are we doing this? \n\n\n\n​We want to curate these same conversations in public\, with a small\, select audience\, panellists we have long admired\, and an open Q&A format to turn our online discourse into real-life action\, or at least\, a fun 45-50 minute break from our phones. \n\n\n\n​Our first roundtable will centre on “thought daughters” and misogynoir. \n\n\n\n​A thought daughter is “an aesthetic largely based on niche memes on Pinterest that describe a persona of an intelligent\, sophisticated young woman\, likely in her twenties\,” aka women who read\, write\, yap\, and\, as FKA Twigs once said\, attempt to fill up the ever-growing vacuum of thinkers in an age of misinformation. On TikTok\, these women are often accused of performativity and\, as such\, find themselves on a tightrope\, revered for their intellect whilst just as quickly facing the brunt of being young\, vocal and online. \n\n\n\n​In particular\, what does this look like when thinking of young Black women who find success through their online visibility but quickly realise that the price they pay for being so visible can often lead to increased harassment\, racism and dismissal of said knowledge? \n\n\n\n​That’s the question we’ve asked our roundtable\, made up of writer Shaniya Odulawa\, journalist Habiba Katsha\, and archivist Naz Hamdi. All of whom are incredible Black writers who have spoken on the growing pressure of choosing between your authenticity and having to perform for audiences built on heralding you as a genius to the point of dehumanisation. \n\n\n\n​The answer? Well\, you’re gonna have to join us to find out. See you there! \n\n\n\nTICKETS: https://luma.com/3876ibb1\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nPlease note this is an externally organised event. For any queries please contact: contact@haaniyah.co.uk \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/panel-noisy-business-thought-daughters/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/avif:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/THOTDAUGHTERS.avif END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260912T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260912T210000 DTSTAMP:20260804T135202Z CREATED:20260804T122203Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T135202Z UID:81144-1789239600-1789246800@housmans.com SUMMARY:Housmans Poetry Series: Jay Gao DESCRIPTION:For our next poetry evening we welcome to London the marvellously talented Jay Gao! He will be launching his mysterious\, stirring new collection\, ‘The Dead One\, The Unconscious One\, Thundering in your ear\, Thriving Slumber’\, published by Carcanet. \n\n\n\nJoining him we welcome a whole host of incredible poets: Dom Hale\, Alycia Pirmohamed\, Victoria Adukwei Bulley\, Azad Ashim Sharma\, Will Harris\, Nina Mingya Powles\, and Mantra Mukim. \n\n\n\nOUR POETS:\n\n\n\nJay Gao is a poet and writer from Edinburgh\, Scotland\, living in New York City. His second poetry collection The Dead One\, The Unconscious One\, Thundering in Your Ear\, Thriving Slumber is forthcoming in Fall 2026 from Nightboat Books and Carcanet Press. His debut collection Imperium (2022) was a winner of the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize\, an Eric Gregory Award\, and a Somerset Maugham Award. \n\n\n\nDom Hale is an editor of Ludd Gang\, the magazine of the Poets’ Hardship Fund\, and Chaff Press. His recent books of poetry include First Nettles (The Last Books\, 2025) and Faint Portal (Distance No Object\, 2023)\, as well as two collaborations with the poet Tom Crompton: Mud Ramps\, an essay on poetics\, and Earthstepper\, two translations from the Exeter Book (both Gong Farm\, 2025 and 2026). \n\n\n\nAlycia Pirmohamed is the author of the collection Another Way to Split Water and a co-author of the collaborative pamphlet this too is a glistening. Her nonfiction debut Shorelines is newly out with Canongate Books\, and her second book of poems\, Then the Lake Shifts is forthcoming next year.  \n\n\n\nVictoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet\, writer\, and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books\, LitHub\, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award\, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book\, QUIET\, won the Folio Prize for Poetry\, the John Pollard International Poetry Prize\, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. QUIET is published by Faber in the UK and in North America by Alfred A. Knopf. \n\n\n\nAzad Ashim Sharma is the director of the87press and as Editor at Philosophy and Global Affairs\, the CLR James Journal\, and The Hythe Review. He is a PhD Candidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College\, University of London. He is the author of three poetry collections\, most recently\, Boiled Owls (Nightboat Books / Out-Spoken Press\, 2024) which was shortlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize. His second collection Ergastulum: Vignettes of Lost Time (Broken Sleep Books\, 2022) was the recipient of the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Guillén Award. In July 2025\, Azad was inaugurated as the Poet Laureate of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He lives in South London. \n\n\n\nWill Harris is a London-based writer. He is the author of the poetry books RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023)\, published by Granta and Wesleyan University Press\, and the essay Mixed-Race Superman (Peninsula Press\, 2018). He has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He co-translated Habib Tengour’s Consolatio (Poetry Translation Centre) with Delaina Haslam in 2022\, and helps facilitate the Southbank New Poets Collective with Vanessa Kisuule. Siblings\, a conversation between Harris\, Jay Bernard\, Mary Jean Chan\, and Nisha Ramayya\, was published by Monitor Books in 2024. He received a Burgess Fellowship from the University of Manchester and was a Fellow at the Institute for Ideas & Imagination in Paris from 2024-25. He is currently working on a project about social care.  \n\n\n\nNina Mingya Powles is a writer and poet from Aotearoa New Zealand\, currently based in London. She is the author of a food memoir\, Tiny Moons\, and a collection of essays\, Small Bodies of Water. Her debut poetry collection Magnolia was a finalist for the Ondaatje Prize\, the New Zealand Book Awards\, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her most recent poetry collection\, In the Hollow of the Wave\, was published in 2025. She is currently working on a book about fabric\, sewing and memory.  \n\n\n\nMantra Mukim is a poet and essayist from Raipur\, India\, currently based in Oxford. His debut collection\, Glitchwork (the87press)\, came out in April 2026. \n\n\n\nThis is a free event\, though you may reserve a copy of Jay’s book if you wish. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/housmans-poetry-series-jay-gao/ CATEGORIES:In Store ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Poetry-Series4.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260915T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260915T203000 DTSTAMP:20260915T150752Z CREATED:20260727T162821Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260915T150752Z UID:80689-1789498800-1789504200@housmans.com SUMMARY:SOLD OUT! 'The Rulers:Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud' by Cecilia Rikap DESCRIPTION:please not this event is now sold out. It will be recorded and uploaded onto our youtube channel in the coming days. \n\n\n\nCapitalism’s rulers are not abstract entities or shadowy operators. Amazon\, Microsoft and Google are the cloud hegemons that subsume the world through the exercise of their intellectual monopolies. Giants like Disney\, McDonalds\, Nike or Walmart depend on them to use AI for knowledge and value extraction and for disciplining workers. States see some of their core functions sequestered. Innovation is not a free and neutral game\, but a hierarchy topped by the rulers. \n\n\n\nCecilia Rikap’s new theoretical framework is grounded in a unique trove of 112 interviews at the world’s largest firms and data on venture capital\, acquisitions\, open source\, AI conferences and patents. They picture a map of the complexities and political implications of corporate power. In Rikap’s counterimage\, technology is developed by the people and for the people and the planet through democratic planning. \n\n\n\nOur Speakers: \n\n\n\nCecilia Rikap is an Associate Professor in Economics and Head of Research at the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She is also a tenure researcher of the CONICET\, Argentina’s national research council\, and associate researcher at COSTECH lab\, Université de Technologie de Compiègne. She is the author of Capitalism\, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered (Routledge)\, which recently won the EAEPE Joan Robinson Prize Competition\, and The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualizing the Emerging New World Order (Palgrave)\, the latter co-authored with B.A.K. Lundvall. \n\n\n\nAisha Down is an investigative journalist based in London\, covering artificial intelligence for The Guardian. She spent six years at OCCRP reporting on financial crime in the Middle East and Sahel. Her work has appeared in The Guardian\, Al Jazeera\, NPR and other outlets. Her investigation into a multi-billion-dollar money laundering scheme at the Central Bank of Iraq won a 2024 SABEW award for international reporting. She began her career at The Cambodia Daily\, Cambodia’s award-winning national paper. She holds a degree in Physics and English from Harvard University. \n\n\n\nTHIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-the-rulerscorporate-power-in-the-age-of-ai-and-the-cloud-by-cecilia-rikap/ CATEGORIES:In Store ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/81sgLbn4aDL._AC_UF8941000_QL80_.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260916T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260916T203000 DTSTAMP:20260714T154213Z CREATED:20260714T154210Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260714T154213Z UID:80482-1789585200-1789590600@housmans.com SUMMARY:WILD FOLKLORE AND UNRULY WOMEN DESCRIPTION:Elizabeth Sulis Kim and Brigid Lowe in conversation\n\n\n\nThe bear deities\, Artio and Artaius\, who’ll rise from sleep; the salmon of wisdom who gifts understanding of the universe’s past\, present and future; the Lion Man carved 40\,000 years ago. Three determined women plot against an ambitious sorcerer\, they are queen Goewin\, the reclusive sorceress Arianrhod\, and Blodeuwedd\, a woman conjured from flowers. \n\n\n\nWhat can we still learn from the ancient\, half-forgotten mythologies of these isles? What can they teach us about ourselves\, about sex\, gender and the role of women in folklore? Two new works at these complex questions in different\, equally engaging and exciting ways. \n\n\n\n Elizabeth Sulis Kim’s The Book of Beasts (Penguin\, 2026) is modern bestiary with an ancient heart\, in it we meet twelve emblematic animals that can help us restore our relationship with the natural world. Steeped in folklore\, mythology\, magic and religion\, The Book of Beasts tells the story of our shapeshifting relationships with animals\, from reverence to persecution\, friendship to fear\, awe to indifference. It asks us what we actually know about the creatures we share this world with – and offers us a different way of living together. \n\n\n\nWhereas Brigid Lowe’s novel The Bloody Branch draws out from celtic mythology some strikingly contemporary concerns. Three powerful heroines unite to avenge themselves on the most dangerous man in ancient legend\, Gwydion a powerful sorcerer whose ambition and cruelty wreak havoc across the kingdom. When at last the earth itself is put at stake\, Goewin\, Arianrhod and Blodeuwedd each unleash their uncanny powers to challenge him. In this vital and visceral novel\, Brigid Lowe casts ancient light on desire\, sex and our relationship with nature to bring these Celtic heroines to explosive\, sensuous\, blossoming new life. \n\n\n\nWe are delighted that Brigid and Elizabeth are able to join for an evening of discussion on the common themes in their work; they will be talking about folklore\, the occult\, Ancient Albion and unruly women. \n\n\n\nOur Speakers: \n\n\n\nElizabeth Sulis Kim‘s writing has appeared in places such as BBC Culture\, Mslexia\, Hellebore\, Fiddler’s Green\, Litro\, The Guardian\, The Independent\, Refinery29\, and the LA Review of Books. She is the founding editor of Cunning Folk\, the popular independent magazine about magic\, mythology\, folklore and the occult. She grew up in the rural West Country and now lives in Scotland. \n\n\n\nBrigid Lowe grew up in a remote Welsh-speaking community on Ynys Môn\, with her younger sister and Irish immigrant parents. She now lives with her children in that part of Scotland known as Yr Hen Ogledd – The Old North – formerly joined with Wales in one Cumbric nation. She studied literature at Bangor\, completed a doctorate at Oxford\, and went on to teach and research at Sheffield and Cambridge Universities\, publishing a book and many essays on the art of fiction. Brigid traces her descent from travellers\, circus performers\, mill workers and gallowglass warriors. She takes photographs of flowers\, forages her food\, clambers pinnacles\, and swims in ice and caves and bottomless pools. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/wild-folklore-and-unruly-women/ CATEGORIES:Feminist event,In Store ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/preeti-insta.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260923T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260923T203000 DTSTAMP:20260916T133442Z CREATED:20260729T163104Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260916T133442Z UID:80751-1790190000-1790195400@housmans.com SUMMARY:SOLD OUT! Zack Polanski: Green Socialist? A conversation with Russell Warfield SOLD OUT! DESCRIPTION:PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO A WAITING LIST PLEASE EMAIL SHOP@HOUSMANS.COM\n\n\n\nJoin us for a friendly\, stimulating debate Russell Warfield and Jonas Patrick Marvin. They ask: is Zack Polanski\, and the Green Party\, the future of the British Left? \n\n\n\nTo help celebrate the launch of Russell Warfield‘s excellent new book The Green SocialistZack Polanski and the Battle for Britain’s Future (Pluto\, 2026) we invite into a good natured debate with fellow socialist writer Jonas Patrick Marvin\, regular contributor to Salvage and author of The Breaking of the English Working Class (Verso\, 2026). \n\n\n\nIn The Green Socialist\, Russel argues that the election of Zack Polanski to the leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales caused a political earthquake. While Labour haemorrhages support\, the far-right rises and a new anti-capitalist party struggles to be born\, Polanski has seized the initiative\, resulting in record-breaking membership numbers and polling for the Greens. How did Polanski end up being propelled to power on an unprecedented mandate within the membership of the Green Party? And what can he achieve from this position?   \n\n\n\nThe Green Socialist takes a look at the Greens through the lens of its tensions\, limitations and contradictions\, demonstrating that Polanski is the natural culmination of the party’s story so far\, and how it can provide a vehicle for a transformational politics capable of defeating the far-right and building a better Britain. \n\n\n\nOur Speakers: \n\n\n\nRussell Warfield is a communications strategist\, working across climatecampaigning\, politics and the third sector for over a decade. He hasbeen a contributing editor at Resurgence and Ecologist\, and his writinghas appeared in New Statesman\, New Internationalist and Byline Times. \n\n\n\nJonas Patrick Marvin is a writer\, researcher and campaigner based inStoke-on-Trent. He regularly contributes to Salvage and Novara Media andis a host of the popular podcast Life of the Party. \n\n\n\nPLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO A WAITING LIST PLEASE EMAIL SHOP@HOUSMANS.COM\n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/zack-polanski-green-socialist-a-conversation-with-russell-warfield/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/9780745352688.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260927T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260927T210000 DTSTAMP:20260811T163042Z CREATED:20260811T162400Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260811T163042Z UID:81587-1790535600-1790542800@housmans.com SUMMARY:POETRY READING: 'AND SUDDENLY INTO NOTHING' by Suzanne Doppelt (translated by Cole Swensen.) DESCRIPTION:Featuring readings from Laynie Browne\, Ágnes Lehóczky\, Cole Swensen & Suzanne Doppelt \n\n\n\nTHIS IS A FREE EVENT\, BUT PLEASE RSVP USING THE LINK BELOW: \n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/poetry-reading-and-suddenly-into-nothing-by-suzanne-doppelt-translated-by-cole-swensen/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Pamenar-Readin-33-Aug-8-2026-D1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260930T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260930T203000 DTSTAMP:20260804T114829Z CREATED:20260804T114036Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260804T114829Z UID:81132-1790794800-1790800200@housmans.com SUMMARY:CHARITY SHOP WORLD! with Tansy E. Hoskins DESCRIPTION:WE ARE DELIGHTED TO WELCOME TANSY E. HOSKINS TO HOUMANS TO TALK ABOUT HER GROUNDBREAKING\, MOVING NEW STUDY OF CHARITY SHOPS AND THE ROLES THEY PLAY IN MODERN CONSUMERIST CULTURE. \n\n\n\n‘Charity shops are ubiquitous and invisible. They anchor the high street\, employ thousands\, process millions of items. Yet far more is written about AI than this staple of 21st century Britain. Thank goodness\, then\, for Tansy Hoskins\, who deftly shows how the charity shop is both an escape from consumerism and an essential part of global capitalism. This is a rich and surprising book\, which takes you both to Accrington and Bangladesh\, providing financial expose as well as character studies.’— Aditya Chakrabortty\, Senior Economics Commentator\, The Guardian \n\n\n\nHave you ever wondered what happens to the contents of the bags you drop off at the charity shop? With over 80 billion pieces of clothing produced each year and with human made stuff now outweighing living biomass\, this is the story of the first sorting site for the deluge of items we discard every single day. Having spent decades exploring charity shops for bargains and treasure\, Tansy Hoskins decided to dig deep into the world of charity shop volunteering. From used underwear to wolf pelts\, Charity Shop World is a personal account of sorting through donations to reveal the entanglement of people and products. This book also investigates the export of clothes to overseas markets and landfill\, revealing hidden shareholders behind a multi-million pound business. \n\n\n\nTaking us to the heart of a country hit by austerity and the cost of living crisis\, Charity Shop World reveals surprising places of human connectivity\, where local communities struggle to find their way through economic hardship to reach a more sustainable way of living. \n\n\n\nIn a world where ‘broken’ things and ‘unwanted’ people are expelled to the margins of society\, this book is a powerful call for a new way of living to rise up from the debris of overproduction and consumption. \n\n\n\n‘A story of what happens to the leftovers of capitalism. Within the places of possibility\, persistence and promise there is hope. Beautifully told\, carefully bundled\, expertly delivered. Tansy Hoskins’ Charity Shop World is a page turner.’— Danny Dorling\, author of The Next Crisis: What We Think About the Future \n\n\n\n‘What might fashion design look like as a public resource based on community and cooperation?  Charity Shop World answers that question by reconnecting us to the humanity underpinning every aspect of fashion\, everything that Big Fashion\, as Tansy calls it- chooses to ignore and exploit. Tansy’s sensitive and warm account of working in a charity shop offers a microcosm of what’s best and what’s worst in today’s fashion system and reveals how another fashion world is possible.  Fashion designers\, students and educators need to centre the end of life of garments from the very start of the design process and critically address waste colonialism in fashion – Charity Shop World should be on all fashion reading lists. Tansy asks us to reflect on\, ‘What do we truly need?’; it’s time for Big Fashion to answer that same question for the future of our people\, species and planet.’—Tanveer Ahmed\, Senior Lecturer in Fashion and Race\, Central Saint Martins\, University of the Arts London \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/charity-shop-world-with-tansy-e-hoskins/ CATEGORIES:In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/images.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261010T193000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261010T210000 DTSTAMP:20260914T155653Z CREATED:20260914T154932Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260914T155653Z UID:82493-1791660600-1791666000@housmans.com SUMMARY:ZINE LAUNCH: TRANNY CENTRAL DESCRIPTION:JOIN US FOR FOR THE LAUNCH OF THIS INCREDIBLE HISTORY OF THE GAY LIBERATION FRONT’S TRANSSEXUAL\, TRANSVESTITE AND DRAG QUEEN GROUP\, FROM TGIRLSONFILM\n\n\n\nCome for the launch of the third bumper edition of “Tranny Central”\, with new archival goodies and newly commissioned articles. \n\n\n\nIn Tranny Central\, TGirlsonFilm summons the spirits of our radical trans-sisters of the Gay Liberation Front. Take a trip back to the suffocating howl of seventies London and bask in the hash hazed memories of Rachel Pollack’s flat. The US had the Compton Cafeteria and Stonewall Riots: how did London’s premiere transvestite and transsexuals react to the bubbling queer rebellion? Often dismissed and erased\, it’s time to know the history. Get in your glad rags\, grab your slap\, and head straight to Tranny Central girl! \n\n\n\nWords\, Research & Organisation by Jaye HudsonVisual Design by Ror BrownIllustrations by Bug Bites \n\n\n\nWe are delighted and honoured to have readings from: \n\n\n\nRoz Kaveney \n\n\n\nMorgan M Page \n\n\n\n& Jaye Hudson \n\n\n\nCOPIES OF THE ZINE WILL BE AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE ON THE NIGHT. DRINKS WILL BE PROVIDED BUT PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BYOB. \n\n\n\nEVENT STARTS AT 19:30\, DOORS AT 19:00. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/zine-launch-tranny-central/ CATEGORIES:Book Launch,In Store,Literary Event ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/LAUNCH-Instagram.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261012T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261012T203000 DTSTAMP:20260826T170200Z CREATED:20260826T163245Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260826T170200Z UID:81982-1791831600-1791837000@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK TALK: The Ragged Edge of Freedom: Race\, Capitalism\, and Class Struggle in Slavery's Borderland DESCRIPTION:Matthew E. Stanley in Conversation with Dr Milly Williamson & Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper\n\n\n\n\n\nA stirring and thoroughly necessary reflection on the histories of slavery\, poverty and class solidarity in the American Midwest. \n\n\n\nThe Ragged Edge of Freedom explores the long shadow of slavery in the Lower Midwest. In the decades after the Civil War\, elites in southern Ohio\, Indiana\, and Illinois constantly raised the specter of “cheap” Black labor to divide workers\, discipline markets\, and gain political advantage. At the same time\, powerful outsiders depicted the borderland as dirty and degraded\, pathologizing the region’s working poor through a rising capitalist ideology that linked a human’s worth to their economic productivity. Desperate to maintain their precarious standing and avert the phantasma of “negro invasion\,” countless Lower Midwesterners envisioned a republic of “free white labor” predicated on the ruthless exclusion of Black “competition.” \n\n\n\nYet\, as Matthew Stanley demonstrates\, racial division is only one part of this story\, as class-based interracialism materialized in unlikely places and against impossible odds. In the heat of border-making and white supremacist violence\, ordinary people challenged the free white labor consensus—through bottom-up struggle over shared material goals. From settler dispossession through the age of mass incarceration and deindustrialization\, this absorbing book recounts dramatic and previously neglected clashes between workers and the formidable bastions of wealth and power. Stanley excavates the stories of abolitionists\, freed people\, agrarian populists\, militant coal miners\, and socialists\, Black and white\, who risked everything in defiance of the region’s restrictive boundaries and its racial capitalist grip. Against a backdrop of blood-stained civil wars and riveting industrial battles in a pivotal yet often overlooked American region\, The Ragged Edge of Freedom is a people’s history—one of inspiration and urgency and complex resistance from below. \n\n\n\nWe are delighted that Matthew is stopping by Housmans during his visit in the UK to talk about this essential new book. He will be joined in conversation by Adam Eliott-Cooper and Milly Williamson from Queen Mary and Goldsmiths colleges\, University of London. \n\n\n\nOur Speakers: \n\n\n\nMatthew E. Stanley is associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas\, and the author or editor of four books\, including the award-winning\, The Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America. \n\n\n\nAdam Elliott-Cooper received his PhD from the Department of Geography and Environmental Science\, University of Oxford\, in 2016. He has previously worked as a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at UCL\, as a teaching fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick and as a research associate in the Department of Geography at King’s College London. His first monograph\, Black Resistance to British Policing\, was published by Manchester University Press in May 2021. He is also co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (Pluto Press\, 2021). \n\n\n\nDr Milly Williamson is interested in the relationship between the media and citizenship and the mediated means by which individuals and social groups are either marginalised or validated. Her research thus spans key questions of our time – from the growth of racism to the huge rise of promotional content and the growth of celebrity culture in online and offline media. Her book include Celebrity: Capitalism and the Making of Fame (Polity) and The Lure of the Vampire: Gender\, fiction and fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy (Columbia). \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-talk-the-ragged-edge-of-freedom-race-capitalism-and-class-struggle-in-slaverys-borderland/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/avif:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/9781685901547.avif END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261013T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261013T203000 DTSTAMP:20260806T161619Z CREATED:20260806T161617Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260806T161619Z UID:81369-1791918000-1791923400@housmans.com SUMMARY:BOOK LAUNCH: THE AGE OF HOBSBAWM by Emile Chabal DESCRIPTION:Join Emile Chabal as he discusses his new intellectual biography of Eric Hobsbawm\, The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian.\n\n\n\nEric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of articles on modern history and culture\, and his books became canonical works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear writing\, vast erudition\, and ability to make his Marxist analysis digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown. \n\n\n\nYet Hobsbawm was no academic hermit. Through his globetrotting journalism\, he was embedded in an extraordinary web of politicians\, activists\, and fellow intellectuals across Europe\, South Asia\, and the Americas\, including Manmohan Singh\, Che Guevara\, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva\, Fernand Braudel\, E. P. Thompson\, Arno Mayer\, and Salvador Allende. Emile Chabal traces the origins of Hobsbawm’s ideas and most famous writings by exploring his scholarly foundations\, delving deep into the archives to uncover hidden links and unexpected conversations that shaped his pathbreaking work. \n\n\n\nGoing well beyond the Ages series of modern history books for which Hobsbawm is best known\, Chabal offers the first substantial interpretation of Hobsbawm’s entire body of writing and gives us unique insights into the generations of Marxist writers with whom Hobsbawm was in conversation—authors whose work continues to shape political debates globally. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/book-launch-the-age-of-hobsbawm-by-emile-chabal/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/preeti-insta1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261014T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261014T203000 DTSTAMP:20260916T180326Z CREATED:20260826T172358Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260916T180326Z UID:82000-1792004400-1792009800@housmans.com SUMMARY:TAJ ALI IN CONVERSATION WITH KOJO KORAM DESCRIPTION:Taj Ali and Kojo Koram are two of the most truly radical thinkers working in Britain today. They both have great experience as front line organisers but also\, on the theoretical level\, advance a rigorous and materialist anti-racism\, rooted in a Marxist understanding of power and exploitation; that works towards a praxis based on class solidarity. So we are absolutely delighted to welcome them to Housmans\, to engage in a conversation around their recent books: Taj’s Come what may\, we’re here to stay: The story of South Asian resistance in Britain (Manchester University Press) and Kojo’s The Next Fix:The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs (Verso). \n\n\n\nCome what may\, we’re here to stay: The story of South Asian resistance in Britain tells the inspirational story of how the South-Asian community in Britain organised against racism in the past and how it continues to fight in the present. British South Asians have a long tradition of radical political activism. The 1970s and 1980s saw the community grappling with prejudice in the workplace and violence in the streets. But this history is deeper than you might think\, from students agitating for independence at the heart of the British Empire to seafarers organising global strikes on the eve of the Second World War. \n\n\n\nIn Come what may Taj reveals how successive generations fought for rights\, dignity and a sense of belonging while actively shaping the country they now call home. He shows that British South Asian political life has often been defined less by religious difference than by shared commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-racism. In pursuit of these goals\, alliances have been forged with other movements\, from Irish republicanism to Black Power. As racism rears its ugly head again\, Come what may\, we’re here to stay asks: are we doomed to repeat the past or will we learn from our mistakes and build a better world together? \n\n\n\nFrom America’s plantation-turned-prison known as Angola in Louisiana to the psychedelic boom of Silicon Valley\, Kojo Koram‘s The Next Fix tracks a seismic shift in global drug policy. Kojo —legal scholar and acclaimed author of Uncommon Wealth—travels across five continents to examine how criminalized substances are being rebranded as commodities in a new billion-dollar industry. Legal cannabis dispen­saries now trade in what once led to life sentences. Psychedelics have become fertile ground for biotech. But for all these developments\, prisons still swell with underprivileged users and addicts\, and enforcement falls hardest along lines of race and class. \n\n\n\nThis is not a polemic for or against legalization. It is a powerful\, clear-eyed reckoning with how we got here—and what kind of future is taking shape in a world addicted to economic “fixes” every bit as much as it is troubled by drugs. Combining report­age\, political analysis and vivid personal testimony\, The Next Fix tells the untold story of drugs\, capital­ism and inequality in the twenty-first century. \n\n\n\nThis is a truly exciting opportunity to see two incredible thinkers in conversation. Please book ahead to avoid disappointment. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/taj-ali-in-conversation-with-kojo/ CATEGORIES:Book Talk ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/preeti-insta2.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261107T190000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261107T203000 DTSTAMP:20260825T122230Z CREATED:20260825T115540Z LAST-MODIFIED:20260825T122230Z UID:81910-1794078000-1794083400@housmans.com SUMMARY:PANEL TALK: PUBLISHING AS COLLECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE with Minor Compositions DESCRIPTION:What if a book wasn’t an endpoint but an infrastructure?\n\n\n\nPlease join us for the launch of Publishing as Collective Infrastructure. This title is less a ‘book’ than it is a radical rethinking of the book-form itself; formulated as a collectively authored\, polyphonic work; an intervention into the realms of academic and open-access publishing. The project is grounded in experimentation and the bridging of theory and practice. It works to challenge proprietary software and big-tech dependency\, orientating itself towards a future mode of publishing that must address the direct crises of precarity and education. \n\n\n\nPublishing as Collective Infrastructure challenges the idea of the book as a fixed object and reimagines publishing as a collective\, political\, and infrastructural practice. Emerging from the ServPub project\, this book brings together artists\, academics\, technologists\, feminist server collectives\, and experimental publishers to expose how contemporary publishing is shaped by extractive platforms\, proprietary software\, unpaid labour\, and opaque infrastructures. Against this backdrop\, the authors develop and document alternative models grounded in free and open-source tools\, collective authorship\, feminist care practices\, and self-hosted\, small-scale infrastructures. \n\n\n\nBlending theory\, documentation\, and reflection\, the book explores publishing as a full-stack practice:  spanning writing\, design\, software\, servers\, logistics\, and governance. It addresses topics including ambulant servers\, wiki-to-print workflows\, versioning and forking books\, radical referencing\, and autonomous publishing\, while situating these practices within broader debates on infrastructure\, open access\, and knowledge politics. Rather than offering a blueprint\, Publishing as Collective Infrastructure functions as a living experiment and pedagogical resource. It invites readers to think with – and work through – the infrastructures that make publishing possible\, and to imagine how knowledge might be produced and shared otherwise. \n\n\n\nBio: Publishing as Collective Infrastructure does not have a single\, unified author. Instead\, it is a polyphonic work shaped by the shared labor\, ideas\, and practices of multiple collectives and projects working across experimental publishing\, feminist infrastructure\, open-source design\, and autonomous knowledge production. The book emerges from collaborations involving In-grid\, Minor Compositions\, noNames\, Shape\, and Systerserver\, with contributions from Constant\, Creative Crowds\, Hackers & Designers\, OBF Experimental Publishing Group\, TITiPI\, & Varia. Together\, these groups contribute situated perspectives\, technical practices\, and collective forms of authorship that reflect the book’s commitment to publishing as a social\, infrastructural\, and political process. \n\n\n\nAs always\, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com\, and a free ticket will be made available. \n\n\n\nIf you choose ‘book + entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier\, or arrange for delivery\, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com. \n\n\n\nDoors Open at 6:45pm\, Event Starts 7:00. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nShare this:\n Share on X (Opens in new window)\n X\n \n Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)\n Facebook\n \n Share on Insta (Opens in new window)\n Insta\n Like this:Like Loading… URL:https://housmans.com/event/panel-talk-publishing-as-collective-infrastructure-with-minor-compositions/ CATEGORIES:In Store ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://housmans.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/ServPub-cvr.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR