Poetry Room Book Group: Meeting and Special Event!

We have a very special event planned for the October chapter of the Poetry Room, Newcastle's finest (only?) book group dedicated solely to poems. Rather than meet as usual in Blackwells Bookshop, the members and hosts (esteemed poets in their own right!) are decamping to the Star and Shadow Cinema for a showing of Heavy Water, a 'poetry documentary' about the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, written by Mario Petrucci (directed by David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky). Based on eye-witness accounts, collected in Svetlana Alexievich's book Voices from Chernobyl, this tells the story of the people who dealt with the disaster at ground-level: the fire-fighters, soldiers, 'liquidators', and their families. Petrucci's poem won the 2002 Daily Telegraph/Arvon award and is published by Enitharmon Press. On screen the poetry is read by David Bickerstaff, Francine Brody, Juliet Stevenson, David Threlfall and Samuel West.

Mario Petrucci has been described as a '21st century Renaissance man'; ecologist, physicist, war poet and creative writing tutor, he is also appearing at the Durham Book Festival on Saturday 31 October, 8 pm.

Our screening of the film at the Star and Shadow cinema on Tuesday 6 October at 6.15pm will be followed by a chance to discuss the issues raised by the film - the potential of poetry and other media, as well as poetry and the wider world generally.

The Star and Shadow is at the top of Stepney Bank, Ouseburn/Byker, opposite The Tanners. (Metro: Manors/Buses: 12, 22, 39, 40, 62, 63, 106, 301, 302)