Photo-Poetry Walk

Join Liz Berry, award-winning poet, and Tom Hicks, acclaimed Black Country artist, on a photo-poetry walk.

Starting at Ikon Gallery, Tom Hicks leads a guided photo-walk around the surrounding urban landscape, followed by a poetry workshop back at the gallery led by Liz Berry. This session will inspire new images and writing about the city’s hidden gems. No previous experience of photography or creative writing needed, just bring along your smart phone or camera.

Liz Berry and Tom Hicks have recently collaborated on The Dereliction (2021), a love letter to the post-industrial landscapes of the Black Country. Priced £10, available online and instore at Ikon Shop.

About the artists

Liz Berry’s first book of poems, Black Country (2014), is a ‘sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands’ (The Guardian) and received a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection (2014). Her pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood (2018) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and the title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2018).

Tom Hicks is the artist behind the documentary photography project Black Country Type. His work explores the post-industrial landscape of the region, focusing on words, typography, handmade lettering and signs. His work has been published and exhibited widely, most recently in the photobook I.D.S.T (2020) and a solo exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2020).