The common press is proud to be hosting Lalah-Simone Springer's book launch & poetry evening on 31st August from 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm. Lalah-Simone Springer's debut poetry collection explores connection, community, love, and loss from a Black queer, working-class perspective.
An Aviary of Common Birds is Lalah-Simone Springer’s first collection of poetry. It is an emotionally raw work built on the poet’s deep wells of inner strength and heart-warming sensitivity. Springer’s poetry asks questions about love, family, community, and working-class relationships, and at the heart of the writing is acceptance. An Aviary of Common Birds is a collection that is always there for the lonely, reaching out a hand, dreaming of a brighter future.
‘Alive with the street songs of East London, Lalah-Simone Springer’s searching, tender poems speak through the sensory worlds of a first date ‘lesbian manicure’, the ‘shukka-shukka sound’ of competitive hand-washing, the ‘sharp shock of pink, juicy fruit’. Moving from loss and desolation into a new-found-land of queer rapture, An Aviary of Common Bird’s voices capture the raw immediacies of desires and their fulfilments. Intoxicating and compelling, these spaces of transformation, liberation and self-claiming are urgently generous.’ - alice hiller
Schedule
- Doors open from 6:30 pm via The Common Press entrance
- 7:00 pm - An Aviary of Common Birds readings and Q & A with Lalah- Simone (Bar)
- 7:40 pm - Poetry from special guests
- 8:30 pm - Open mic slots for poets to jump on stage.
About Lalah-Simone Springer (she/they)
Lalah-Simone Springer is a poet and speculative fiction writer from Dagenham. Lalah’s first poetry collection, An Aviary of Common Birds will be published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2023 . In 2022, they released the first single from their upcoming collaborative spoken word album, Cyclical Music. Lalah was long-listed for the Merky New Writers Prize in 2021 and has been published on the ANTHEMS podcast, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Onyx Magazine and more.
Previous collaborations as a performance artist have been staged at The Barbican, Whitechapel Gallery, Folkstone Fringe and Almanac Project Space.
lalahspringer.com
Special guests to be announced...
‘A thought-provoking collection exploring memory, relationships, and the commonalities between people. Lalah’s care. Her love, wit and frustration permeate through these poems.’ - Yomi Ṣode