A SATIRICAL cartoonist is one of three poets who will be reading at a series of events hosted by Teesside University and radical independent publisher, Smokeback Books.

Visual journalist and award-winning cartoonist Martin Rowson, who contributes drawings to The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Mirror, will be exhibiting his work in the university’s Constantine Gallery in Middlesbrough from March 9 to 20 as well as giving a poetry reading on Tuesday, March 17.

His books include graphic adaptations of The Waste Land, Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels and between 2006 and 2013, and he regularly made a fool of himself in The Independent on Sunday by reducing the work of some of the world’s best-loved writers to a series of limericks. His reading takes place at 6pm in the university’s Centuria Building, in room H0.01.

Opening the free series on Tuesday, January 20, is Ian Duhig who has won the Forward Prize and the National Poetry Competition and has been shortlisted three times for the TS Eliot Prize.

He will be speaking at 6pm in the university’s Athena Building, in room A2.01, followed on Tuesday, February 24, by Jo Colley, from Teesside at the same time and venue as Mr Duhig.

Professor Gerda Roper, Dean of the School of Arts & Media at Teesside University, said: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with Smokestack Books to bring together the first series of intuitive and informative poetry readings.

“The university will be welcoming some of the biggest names in contemporary poetry and I am certain that this is just the beginning of a long and successful collaboration that will provide a major cultural initiative for the area.”