New Book

HOWARD MINGHAM was born in 1952 in Norfolk and moved to Hackney at the age of ten. He was

educated at Hackney Downs School and Kingsway College. Schizophrenic, he was one of a group of socially

marginalised writers who attended the Hackney Writers’ Workshop, which started meeting fortnightly

at the Centerprise Bookshop in Hackney in 1976. The alternate Wednesday evening meetings were convened

by writer Ken Worpole (Dockers and Detectives, 1984) who, along with Mingham’s friend and fellow workshop

poet, David Kessel, encouraged Mingham’s sublime and deeply lyrical poetry. Early one morning in 1984,

Mingham was found dead in the Cambridge Heath Road area of East London, having fallen from a tower

block. An ‘open verdict’ was recorded. The poems in this collection were originally published to accompany

a reading in celebration of his poetry and life which took place in November that same year. Other poems,

which first appeared in Hackney Writers’ Workshop 1 (Centerprise Trust Ltd, 1977), are also included. These

twenty-seven poems are all that are known to survive of the work of Howard Mingham, but together they

make for an astonishing posthumous discovery.

The book was launched on Saturday 16 June through the News from Nowhere Club at the Epicentre, Leytonstone. An autumn re-launch is currently being arranged by patron Ken Worpole.