We are delighted to be informed by our friends and colleagues at Bucheon UNESCO City of Literature that their 2020 Residency will be taken up by Notts poet Rory Waterman. Full statement from Bucheon follows:

The Bucheon Creative City of Literature Office is delighted and thrilled to announce the two lucky winners of the Bucheon Residency 2020 Program. It is our first residency program to invite writers from various UNESCO Creative Cities to Bucheon, providing them with a place to stay and work, a stipend, and various opportunities for exploring culture and interacting with the local scene. Its inaugural residents will be Rory Waterman from Nottingham, UK and Jeff Kisuk Noh from Montreal, Canada

We received 75 applications, and are amazed by the talented artists from the UNESCO Creative Cities around the world. It was a very difficult decision for the Jury to select only two out of such brilliant artists. We would like to thank this year’s applicants for their passionate participation and interests.

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Rory Waterman

Rory Waterman is a poet, critic and editor who lives and works in Nottingham, the U.K. He has published three collections, Tonight the Summer’s Over(Carcanet, 2013), Sarajevo Roses(Carcanet, 2017) and Sweet Nothings(Carcanet, 2020). He has read at Cork International Poetry Festival(Ireland), and in Edinburgh, New York, Pula(Croatia), and throughout the UK, with strong belief in the power of poetry as a spoken medium.

Waterman has been interested in borders and how they affect people, broadening his range with the publication of the poetry pamphlet Brexit Day on the Balmoral Estate(Rack Press, 2017). He intends to develop his fourth collection around sequences, contemplating the result of the implementation of borders on the consciences of people, combining creative non-fiction prose works, part travel writing and part documentation, and photographs. Bucheon(Korea) will definitely provide a context for his endeavor in a wholly new creative direction.

Rory Waterman’s webpage: www.rorywaterman.com

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The Bucheon City of Literature Office understands life is rather unsettled at present due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are committed to our newly launched residency program, and are very much looking forward to welcoming Rory Waterman and Jeff Kisuk Noh to Bucheon. We hope that it will be possible to host these winners in our city this coming September-October.