Join Grace Nichols for a spell-binding evening of poetry, and the UK launch of her new collection The Tracks of My Name (Bloodaxe Books).

This will be an occasion to meet Nichols - a recent recipient of the prestigious RSL Pioneer Prize - and to hear her read from her new collection, which absorbingly interweaves her Guyanese/Caribbean and British heritages.

In the new book, Nichols embarks on a journey across the English countryside to the small town of Olney in Buckinghamshire. Olney was where the one-time English slave-trader (later abolitionist) John Newton lived and wrote his famous hymn, Amazing Grace which inspired her Guyanese Methodist parents to name her Grace Olney after both hymn and place. Exploring the relationship between memory and history, conscience and greed, a sense of place and love of landscape, Nichols makes a space for redemption.

“Over the past four decades, Grace has been an original, pioneering voice in the British poetry scene…She is a moving elegist, and a poet of conciliation and constructive dialogue between cultures” – Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, on behalf of The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry Committee

The Tracks of My Name will be available for purchase and signature in the bar after the reading.

The event is a collaboration between The Coronet Theatre and Renaissance One, supported by Bloodaxe Books.