Latest up from Spoken Label (Author / Artist / Poetry Podcast) features the
amazing Peter Topping.

Peter is a local artist in the Chorlton Area and has worked on several books with historian Andrew Simpson. He has also written his own book entitled “Smile Dammit Smile!!! – Chorlton”.

He has created many “History Walls” and art installations around Chorlton together with Manchester historian Andrew Simpson.

Together with Andrew he has created 14 books on the history of Chorlton and Manchester

He was The Chorlton Arts Festival Director for 4 years.

At the present, he is working as Virtual Arts Festival Director for Chorlton Arts and also is putting together artwork by local artists to be displayed on hoardings around Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

In 2023, at the age of 74, he started collating the poems he had already written and started to write new poems reflecting on his life so far.

He then worked on a project with Lindy Newns, which came about while he was working on The Virtual Chorlton Arts Festival for 2024. Peter was curating the Literary Arts section and was creating the exhibition panel that carried Lindy’s entry. As he read the poem, he began to think that perhaps he could enliven the panel by painting a picture of the scene.

He then decided that it would be fun to have a collection of Lindy’s poems illustrated in the same way, mixing the two arts together, literary and visual, in what would be an exciting book to read, and to view.

The rest is revealed in this feature length podcast

More about Peter can be found at:

https://pubbooks.co.uk/

#poetrypodcast #art #artpodcast #poetry #chorlton

The video for this is here - https://youtu.be/mAELVAmq0fo