THE ever-popular A Poem and a Pint programme returns for the new year, with a first event being held in Ulverston next weekend.

This year, organisers celebrate a successful grant application to the Arts Council which has ensured funding for a further three years and will see more prestigious poets making their way to South Cumbria.

Each event also gives local musicians a chance to perform to a wider audience. 

Maurice Riordan is the guest name for the season opener at the Coronation Hall on Saturday 20. Well known as a poet, editor and translator, Professor of Poetry at Hallam University in Sheffield and editor of the Poetry Review, his is a quiet, insinuating voice, with a measured delivery, that never strains after its effects. 

His style can be downbeat, amused, even laconic, so the listener can often be surprised by how far his thoughts have been led as a poem has explored time or aspects of scientific thought.

But Riordan’s more abstract concerns are countered by a strong sense of place: the rural Ireland of his childhood, or the energy of contemporary London. 

He has published four collections of poetry, all with Faber and Faber; The Water Stealer (2013) being his most recent collection. It explores his intense, if often jovial, engagement with the depredations of time and was also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. 

Em and Suze, an up-and-coming Furness acoustic duo, whose pop rock folk compositions are making waves in the local music scene, will provide the music. Their two-part vocal harmonies mark them out from the crowd. This will be their debut performance at Poem and a Pint.

Ross Baxter will be MC for the night, and the regular floor slots for local poets to read their work can be booked on the night. This event starts at 7.30pm, and entrance is payable on the door.