specialising in live events & writer development
We had another fantastic night at Hyde Park Book Club last month, as we collaborated with Bad Betty for a third year running. This time, we were treated to performances from Kayo Chingonyi, Molly Naylor, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, and Samantha Fain!
Here’s a highlights video, courtesy of Josh Hill.
And here’s a selection of stills, also taken by Josh. Huge thanks as always to everybody that joined us. We return to HPBC on Saturday 15 June with Salena Godden headlining as part as Leeds Lit Fest!
We complete a trio of Northern dates with Salena Godden in our native city of Leeds, as Salena headlines this event as part of the Lit Fest. We’re at Hyde Park Book Club and tickets are on sale here at £6 full (£4 concessions).
The event will be hosted by Maria Ferguson and will feature showcase sets from Simone Yasmin, Faye Marshall, and Spencer Wood.
We return to the North Somerset coast for another jaw-droppingly good night at Weston-super-Mare’s Front Room! With a headline slot from Salena Godden plus feature slots from Malaika Kegode and Jonny Fluffypunk, you’re in for a real treat.
Tickets are Pay As You Feel (suggested £12) and are available here.
Salena Godden is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage based in London. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize.
Salena’s work has been shortlisted for the 4thWrite short story prize and the Ted Hughes Prize, and has been widely anthologised and broadcast on radio, TV and film. Her poem Pessimism is for Lightweights is on permanent display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. She was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Her brand-new poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury is available here on Canongate Books.
Malaika Kegode is an award-winning writer and performer based in Bristol. Beginning her arts career as a performance poet in 2014, Malaika has since developed her practice to encompass theatre, radio, and film writing. Her autobiographical gig-theatre show Outlier debuted on Bristol Old Vic’s main stage in 2021.
Malaika’s narrative work has also been featured on BBC Radio 4, and her poetry collections Requite and Thalassic are published by Burning Eye Books.
Jonny Fluffypunk is an economic refugee from the Home Counties. He began his ‘career’ spitting vicious political verse between bands at punk gigs until cured by a West Country shaman. Now he ‘does’ poetry that deafly fuses bittersweet autobiography, political disillusionment, and surreal whimsy, in an act which has established him as a firm favourite at festivals, arts centres, and housing benefit offices up and down the country.
We’re thrilled to finally announce our mini series of online poetry writing workshops! These sessions will take place over Zoom, enabling you to join from the comfort of your own home, from anywhere in the world.
As always, the workshops are predominantly targeted at writers who identify as working-class or as coming from a working-class background, but are open to everybody. Tickets are Pay As You Feel (£3, £5, £7) and are available below.
Please note that these workshops will be recorded, with recordings being made available exclusively through our Patreon page. We’ll enable close captioning during the Zoom meetings and will add subtitles to the recordings.
All workshops will take place from 18.30-20.30 BST.
Talia Randall is a poet, performer and award winning podcaster. Talia has performed comedy, poetry and theatre across the UK and is the creator of What Words Are Ours, a poetry knees-up that features Deaf and hearing artists on the same stage. Talia’s debut poetry pamphlet, Proverbs for a Woman Drinking Alone was published by Broken Sleep Books in February 2023. Talia’s debut collection Eighty Two was published in the same year.
Raymond Antrobus is a poet, performer, and hearing aid user, born and bred in East London, Hackney. His poems have also been published in magazines and literary journals such as The Rialto, Magma Poetry, Oxford Diaspora’s Programme, British Council Literature, Shooter Literary Journal, The Missing Slate, Morning Star, and the University Of Arkansas Press.
Raymond has read and performed his poetry at festivals (Glastonbury, Latitude, Bestival,), to Universities (Oxford, Goldsmiths, Warwick), and has read internationally (South Africa, Kenya, North America, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and more).
Cecilia Knapp was the Young People’s Laureate for London 2020/2021. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward prize for best single poem. Her collection Peach Pig is published by Corsair. Her novel Little Boxes is published by The Borough Press. She teaches creative writing at City Lit and is the lead tutor for The Roundhouse Poetry Collective.
Now then! We’re visiting Hull for one night only, as we present this very special event starring Salena Godden at Wrecking Ball Arts Centre. Salena will be joined by two of Yorkshire’s finest in Vicky Foster and Matt Abbott.
Tickets are Pay As You Feel (£6, £8, £10) and are on sale here.
Salena Godden is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage based in London. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize.
Salena’s work has been shortlisted for the 4thWrite short story prize and the Ted Hughes Prize, and has been widely anthologised and broadcast on radio, TV and film. Her poem Pessimism is for Lightweights is on permanent display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. She was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Her brand-new poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury is available here on Canongate Books.
Vicky Foster is an award-winning writer, performer and poet who has broadcast extensively across the BBC. She has published two collections of writing and her memoir is due for release in 2024. She is also studying for a PhD in English and Creative Writing. She won The Society of Authors’ Imison Award at the 2020 BBC Audio Drama Awards for her Radio 4 play Bathwater, and her Radio 4 documentary, Can I Talk About Heroes? was reviewed in the national media.
She has written poetry for radio, podcast and TV, delivered writing projects and creative writing workshops for a wide range of organisations, and performed at festivals and events across the North. She is a writer-in-residence for First Story, working with schools to help young people tell their own stories.
Matt Abbott is a Wakefield-born poet, educator, and activist. His debut solo show Two Little Ducks earned a string of 5* reviews at Edinburgh Fringe 2017 and on a 2018 UK theatre tour. The show’s poems – exploring working-class support for Brexit and his experiences volunteering at the Calais Jungle refugee camp – were published by Verve in 2018.
Matt’s debut kids’ poetry collection A Hurricane in my Head was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. He was recently longlisted for The Poetry Society’s prestigious National Poetry Competition and has had work translated into Arabic for The New Arab. Matt is also known for fronting indie band Skint & Demoralised.
We round off our first Blackburn workshop series on Saturday 25 May, with guest facilitator Ruth Awolola! As with the previous sessions, we’re at Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery from 10am-12pm and tickets are Pay As You Feel (£3, £5, £7) – on sale here.
Ruth Awolola is a Nigerian Jamaican poet, performer, theatremaker and creative facilitator based in Manchester. She writes and performs for a variety of different audiences including poetry for children and young people and has performed her work across the UK and internationally.
Her poetry first features in ‘Rising Stars: New Young Voices in Poetry’ and has since been included in numerous anthologies. She is a Obsidian Foundation Alum, a Writing Squad Graduate and former Roundhouse Resident Artist and currently works as the Learning Officer for Manchester Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University.
We return to The Edge Theatre & Arts Centre on Thursday 13 June for our fourth instalment of LIVEwire Manchester! It meant a lot to us to kickstart the LIVEwire era at this venue back in March and we can’t wait to bring you yet another stunning line-up.
This event features Salena Godden, Molly Naylor, and Nafeesa Hamid. Tickets are on sale here for £15 (£13)!
Salena Godden is an award-winning author, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican-mixed heritage based in London. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize.
Salena’s work has been shortlisted for the 4thWrite short story prize and the Ted Hughes Prize, and has been widely anthologised and broadcast on radio, TV and film. Her poem Pessimism is for Lightweights is on permanent display at the People’s History Museum, Manchester. She was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Her brand-new poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury is available here on Canongate Books.
Molly Naylor is a poet, scriptwriter, performer and director. Her stories and plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and she has performed at festivals and events all over the world. She has published three poetry collections her third was published by Bad Betty in spring 2022.
She is the co-creator and writer of Sky One comedy After Hours. She wrote and performed the acclaimed solo spoken-word shows Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You and My Robot Heart. Her first graphic novel was published in September 2021.
Nafeesa Hamid was born in Kashmir, bred in Birmingham, and uses the intersectionality of her identities to inform her work. Her debut poetry collection Besharam (2018, Verve Poetry Press) was highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2019. She is subsequently published in Forward Poems of the Decade 2011-2020 (2021, Faber Poetry). She is also published in The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write (2017, Saqi Books).
Nafeesa has appeared on BBC Bitesize; BBC Radio 4 Comedy; The Verb; as well as literary festivals across the country. She is currently developing her first full length play about corner shops, magic, faith and worship. Nafeesa is a big fan of large bodies of water.
The final workshop in this Huddersfield series takes place on Saturday 1 June and will be led by the one and only Toria Garbutt! We’re at the Lawrence Batley Theatre again, although this session takes place in The Attic Theatre as opposed to TEN Queen Street.
As with all of our workshops, they’re predominantly aimed at writers who identify as working-class or as coming from a working-class background, but are open to everybody. Tickets are Pay As You Feel (£3, £5, £7) and are available here.
Toria Garbutt was born in Knottingley in 1982. Her debut poetry collection, Hot Plastic Moon, was released on CD with Nymphs & Thugs in 2016 and her first book, The Universe and Me, was published in 2018 by Wrecking Ball Press.
Toria is a regular tour support for Dr John Cooper Clarke and has performed extensively in venues across the UK and Europe, including London Palladium, Glastonbury Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, and BBC Contains Strong Language Festival.
Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Big Issue North, and on BBC Radio 4. Toria’s new collection ‘Another Time in Space’ is out now on Wrecking Ball Press.
It was a real honour for us to host the Leeds Heat of the Roundhouse Poetry Slam last week – particularly as it’s the first time that the iconic competition as visited our city.
All nine competitors absolutely blew us away. Huge congratulations to Birmingham-based poet Bradley Taylor who won on the night and progressed to the Grand Final in London!
We were buzzing to attract a full house at Hyde Park Book Club. If you fancy joining us there again, check out our LIVEwire x Bad Betty collab on 21 May! Thanks to Josh Hill for the highlights videos and images.
This first series of Clevedon poetry workshops concludes on Saturday 11 May and will be delivered by Saili Katebe! It’ll take place from 12.30-2.30 at Theatre Shop, and tickets are Pay As You Feel (£3, £5, £7).
As with all of our workshops, it’s predominantly targeted at writers who identify as working-class, or as coming from a working-class background. That said, everybody is welcome – whether established poets or total novices!
Tickets are available here via Eventbrite.
Saili Katebe is a Zambian-born writer, performer and workshop facilitator based in the South West of England. His work celebrates the musicality of language and the power of art as a way to connect people through story and creativity.
LIVEwire Poetry 