Page 8 - Jay Bernard News Today

Bernie Grant Arts Centre festival starts today WHERE ALL ROADS LEAD; Bernie Grant Arts Centre THE BERNIE Grant Arts Centre’s Tottenham Literature Festival, a bold festival of words, kicks off today. This year’s festival focuses on the theme of ‘Connectedness’. Against the backdrop of social isolation, the devastation of COVID-19 and the rallying cry that Black Lives Matter, Tottenham Literature Festival arrives a week before Christmas to encourage community and a joyful celebration o...

Bernard wins for the poetry collection Surge (Penguin Random House/Chatto & Windus), which is about the disastrous party blaze in Southeast Londo9n in 1981 known as the New Cross Fire. Thirteen Black partiers aged 13 to 22 were killed in the event, and a 14th party attendee later committed suicide. The event became a potent and lasting flashpoint in British race relations and official indifference, prompting the protest slogan, “13 Dead, Nothing Said.” Bernard’s treatment of the subject ...