We are thrilled to host Lila Matsumoto launching her new collection of poetry, *Talk a Blue Streak*, and Fatema Abdoolcarim reading from *Tremble* (2025), both published by Monitor Books.

In 1990, a girl moves to the USA. She goes to school, learns English, becomes an American citizen, and aspires to become a writer. But what is she to make of the extravagance, bombast, and damage she encounters in the new country’s language and customs? And what about the shrink-wrapped hunks of frozen meat, hurricanes, and the cat-eye marbles scattered on the road?  Hugely pleasurable, in turns funny and dolorous, *Talk a Blue Streak* examines how the act of writing declares a selfhood, but one that is always performative, looped, and curlicued.⁣

*Tremble*, Fatema Abdoolcarim’s debut collection of poems, is an intimate and involving sequence on fertility and faith. A memoir in verse, these poems relate encounters with the animal other, the uncertain, but always echoing the tender rituals of family, food, prayer.

Lila Matsumoto’s publications include *Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water* (Prototype, 2021), which was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and recommended by the Poetry Book Society, *Urn & Drum* (Shearsman, 2018), and *The Very Nature of Materiality is an Entanglement* (In Other Words, 2024). She plays in the band Food People and teaches creative writing and poetics at the University of Nottingham.⁣

Fatema Abdoolcarim is an Indian-Pakistani Hong Konger who makes films and writes. Her films have been shown internationally, including at Locarno Film Festival, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Osaka Asian Film Festival. *Tremble* is her debut collection of poetry. She lives in the Baltic Sea, on the island of Bornholm.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions (under 18s to be accompanied by an adult over 21yrs, 1:1 ratio) — Read more — Read less