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The Whitworth Gallery re-opens with a major new solo exhibition from Cornelia Parker, which includes a collaboration with the Nobel prize winning physicist Sir Konstantin Novoselov. A stray fragment of graphite from a William Blake drawing housed in the Whitworth’s collection will set off a firework display inspired by Blake’s final artwork ‘The Ancient of Days’. Parker explains her attraction to using waste material, to fragments and to absences.

The writer and critic DJ Taylor’s new short story collection is ‘Wrote for Luck’ (Galley Beggar). Taylor is interested in the idea of the short story as a fragment ‘with a life of its own’, and as a commission for The Verb, writes a letter of protest to Kingsley Amis who saw them as ‘chips from the novelist’s work-bench’.

For the Mercury-Prize nominated rapper and ‘Next Generation’ poet Kate Tempest, tenderness is the start of any artist’s journey. She makes a passionate case for the need for contemporary mythologies, and explains why she has been drawn to the myth of Tiresias. The figure of Tiresias informs and animates the themes in her latest poetry collection ‘Hold Your Own’ (Picador). Tempest’s debut solo album is ‘Everybody Down’ (Ninja Tune).

The singer-songwriter Darren Hayman’s latest project takes William Morris’ words from his ‘Chants for Socialists’, and sets them to music. Hayman tells Ian what drew him to work that is ‘unfashionable and sincere’, and how he balanced his songcraft with loyalty to Morris’ original words. ‘Chants for Socialists’ is out now from WIAIWYA records.