Writing workshop with Shirley May

Shirley will support participants in creating poetry to celebrate the contributions of Black women to the infrastructure of Manchester as a meaningful way to honour their legacy. The workshop will feature poetry from Shirley’s own collection as a springboard to creating new, as well as Shirley’s eulogy that she has written herself and stories from young people in Manchester. The workshop will also use quotes from other contemporary black female writers in the UK as inspiration.

About Shirley: Shirley Anne May, co-founder of Wordsmith Awards and Young Identity, Has championed performance poetry for 25 years. A mentor in schools, she partners with Manchester’s arts organisations. Internationally, she teaches, performs, and produces Spoken Word in Amsterdam and Berlin. A respected UK spoken word artist, she’s a Royal Society of Literature Fellow, poet, and author of “She Wrote Her Own Eulogy.”