22 April 2024 10:00 am – 12:00 pm *SOLD OUT*
This walk will introduce participants to some of the poems Morris-Campbell has written about his hometown, South Shields. His debut collection, Corrigenda for Costafine Town (Blue Diode Press, 2021) was made up of poems exploring the cultural, post-industrial and personal connections the author has to South Tyneside. Morris-Campbell will read a number of these poems ‘in-situ’, at or near the sites they correspond to in the book. There will be readings at: the foreshore by Little Haven Beach; on Keppel Street; King Street; and by the river Tyne.
Participants will gain a unique opportunity to hear the author reading material in the geographic places which inspired them. Morris-Campbell will also reflect on the process of researching, writing and drafting the poems, reflecting on ideas of place-based literature and feelings of belonging and estrangement.
The walk will start and end at The Word: National Centre for the Written Word library at the marketplace in South Shields (close to the Ferry landing and Tyne & Wear Metro and bus station). Envisioned as a two-hour circular stroll of approximately three miles, participants will be led ‘out’ to the beach, then ‘back’ to the riverside.
The route is largely flat and pedestrianised, though accessibility may be an issue along the river frontage. A scoping exercise can fully ascertain this. Public toilets and a café are available at The Word, which also has car parking.
Background
Jake is currently completing the manuscript for his first book of creative non-fiction, Between the Salt and the Ash: A Journey Along the Camino of the North (Manchester University Press, 2025). The book is a journey between Lindisfarne in Northumberland and Durham Cathedral, an odyssey along the North-East coast which asks how we might make new ways through the old north.
The book follows a decade in which Jake has led and co-facilitated walking-based arts practice and ‘walk-shops’. In 2014-15 he worked on Ghosts of the Restless Shore, a multidisciplinary exploration of the natural and social history of the Sefton Coast on Merseyside. In 2015-16, he was a lead artist on Stinging Bedes: A Poetry and Print Pilgrimage, a Heritage Lottery Funded project guiding public participants between the twinned monasteries of St. Paul’s, Jarrow, and St. Peter’s, Sunderland, using text and visual arts to ‘illuminate’ the route’s medieval past. In 2022, he wrote for Radio 3’s ‘Essay’ programme, making a piece about pilgrimage in the work of the late County Durham poet, William Martin.
Biography
Jake Morris-Campbell was born in South Shields in 1988. His debut collection of poetry Corrigenda for Costafine Town (Blue Diode, 2021) was Highly Commended in the 2022 Forward Prizes and longlisted for the 2022 RSL Ondaatje Prize. A 2021 BBC New Generation Thinker, he has been commissioned to write pieces for Radio 3, including work at the After Dark Festival at Sage Gateshead and for the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition at the Laing in Newcastle. Jake’s first book of prose, Between the Salt and the Ash, is being published by Manchester University Press in early 2025. He is Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the Screen School, Liverpool John Moores University, and lives with his wife and two children in South Tyneside.
