Nik Perring, "Ghost Reader"

 

Nik Perring is the author of six books for children and adults, and prize-winning short stories published all over the world.

He’s taught writing in schools, universities, in the community, with UNICEF and for the BBC; he’s been Writer in Residence for Sheffield’s Year of Reading, put poems on the sides of buildings and in city centres, and worked with a huge range of people in loads of countries. 

His most recent book is Ghost Reader, commissioned by the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust. The book is for 9-12 year-olds and is illustrated by Ella de Souza. You can read more about it below. 

Nik's website is here. 

About Ghost Reader, by Nik Perring

The ghosts are forgetting who they are.

The Grey Girl needs help.

She’s come to Ayala to ask for it. 

But how do you help a ghost? Especially one who doesn’t even know who she is …

Ayala is determined to find out in this exciting, sometimes creepy, and often tender adventure, starting in Sheffield’s General Cemetery and spanning eras and lives. There is help out there if you know where to look, from the living and the dead. The trick is finding out who’s telling the truth, and whose intentions might not be quite so honourable …

From Ghost Reader

‘You keep saying that you can’t remember things. How come you’re forgetting?’

Rosetta’s face became stern. ‘How would I know? Something strange has been happening. I wonder if the forgetting started when the visitors began arriving.’ She sighed. Pushed her hands to her cheeks. Shook her head. ‘Terribly sad. Those lost souls.’

‘Who?’ asked Ayala.

‘Newcomers to the cemetery, but not new to their second lives. For some reason, they started drifting in here, more faded than they ought to be. Some of them, you could barely see at all. All of them asking us questions that we cannot answer.’

‘What do they want to know?’

‘Who they are. Where they’re from.’

‘But why?’ asked Ayala.

A dog barked, and it was close.

Ayala froze. ‘Someone’s coming.’

Chris Jones, "Little Piece of Harm"

By Chris Jones

I grew up in Quorn, Leicestershire. I’ve lived in Sheffield since 1990. I came to the city to do a PhD on the poetry of Thom Gunn. I was given an Eric Gregory Award for my poetry in 1996. From 1997 to 1999, I worked as a writer-in-residence at Nottingham Prison. I was the Literature Officer for Leicestershire for five years and then spent some time as a freelance writer and poetry festival organiser. I’ve spent the last fourteen years teaching Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University (my staff profile page is here).

In 2007 I published my first full-length collection, The Safe House, with Shoestring Press. I have since published a number of pamphlets and full-length collections, including Jigs and Reels (Shoestring Press, 2013), Skin – which came out in 2015 and is still available from Longbarrow Press – and the sequence which I have just published with Longbarrow Press: Little Piece of Harm (2021).

About Little Piece of Harm

Little Piece of Harm is a narrative sequence that focuses on 24 hours in the life of a city that has been shut down in the aftermath of a shooting. As this act of violence ramifies outwards, the sequence explores the geographical reach of Sheffield – its urban settings and its rural landmarks – and eavesdrops on the city’s conversations. Pete, our narrator, comes into contact with a range of people who reflect on this public killing in relation to private moments of trauma and harm. Subsequently we learn that Pete has his own burdens he is coming to terms with, as day bleeds into night.

You can read three blog pieces that I wrote about the evolution of the sequence here, here and here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the collection.

From Little Piece of Harm

Blue Abandoned Van

Rhyme all the ways a city battens down.
Say, river waters tide the roads to town.

Power's stripped from mainframes, circuits, wires.
Crowds look on: a business district dies.

Blizzard. The largest snowfall in decades.
Squares are clad as monuments to trades.

Or here, high summer, sometime afternoon,
a man steps back from a black saloon

and takes in Sheffield's stinging diesel haze
as traffic smokes and throttles, stalls, blockades.

He hoofs across four lanes of idling cars
to ditch his echo under Wicker Arch.

Skims his shadow off weed-encrusted brick
the curry houses, pubs no longer public

over the lights, where the quick or alert
might glimpse a strap, some shade beneath his shirt

though his image clears the shopfront glass
before observers get to alter the facts;

he's made the bridge and marked the policeman
who edges round a blue abandoned van.

He slows to wrest this load from off his chest:
pics will later show a pistol's heft

rolled a quarter turn in gangster style
(here's blurry footage caught on someone's mobile).

He’s metres away, lugging freighted breath,
the palest citrus fragrance thinned with sweat;

hails the copper now as though in greeting
as if his palm might cup an ear, a cheek.

A shot to start the gawkers, one in the mouth
and through this opened face a voice pours out.