Sunday 11th October at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Poetry events programmed by VERVE Poetry for Birmingham Literature Festival. Featuring live spoken word, CRATE POETRY! - the Jules Holland of poetry, debut poets, poetry workshops, and headline poetry night. VERVE POETRY @ BIRMINGHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL SUNDAY 11TH OCTOBER 2026 Further info below Programme of VERVE POETRY events. Young Poets Takeover: If you’re aged 25 or younger, bring a poem and arrive early to sign up for our open mic. Featuring headline sets from Birmingham based British-Pakistani Young Poet Hala Qamar and Coventry former Foyles Young Poet Scarlet Timlett. 11 October 2026 at 10:00:00 200 Jennens Rd, Birmingham B4 7XR, UK Info & Tickets VERVE Patron Joelle Taylor in an extended solo performance from Maryville Quite probably the best poetry performer of her generation, be mesmerised as Joelle reads and embodies a selection of poems from Maryville (Bloomsbury, 2025). 11 October 2026 at 13:45:00 200 Jennens Rd, Birmingham B7 4EJ, UK Info & Tickets VERVE Debutants: poets near the start of their journey. Roma Havers, Ellora Sutton and special guest Rupinder Kaur Waraich with host Sabeen Chaudhury. 11 October 2026 at 12:15:00 200 Jennens Rd, Birmingham B7 4EJ, UK Info & Tickets VERVE HEADLINE EVENT: Mona Arshi, Sarah Howe, Rachel Long with host Jo Bell Mona Arshi is back for the first time since 2017 reading from her PBS Autumn Choice, Mouth (Chatto, 2025). Joining Mona are Sarah Howe and Rachel Long. 11 October 2026 at 15:00:00 200 Jennens Rd, Birmingham B7 4EJ, UK Info & Tickets WORKSHOP: Portals, Time Travel & How to Slant and Disrupt Narrative with Rachel Long Create poems rich with tension, resonance, and surprise. Expect to leave with a clutch of new poems that slant, disrupt and innovate. 11 October 2026 at 12:30:00 200 Jennens Rd, Birmingham B7 4EJ, UK Info & Tickets VERVE presents CRATE POETRY LIVE! Tyrone Houghton, Nafeesa Hamid, Bradley Taylor & Maddie. Hosted by Paul Stringer, with open mic. Crate Poetry Live! Is a contemporary live poetry show in a TV studio style format. 11 October 2026 at 17:00:00 200 Jennens Rd, Birmingham B7 4EJ, UK Info & Tickets POETRY EVENTS AT BIRMINGHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL SUNDAY 11TH OCTOBER 2026 Royal Birmingham Conservatoire THIS YEAR, VERVE POETRY is popping up at festivals across the region. Earlier in the year, we had a wonderful day at Ledbury Poetry Festival, and now we're delighted to be taking over one day at Birmingham Literature Festival too. We'll be bringing our usual mix of stellar poetry stars, lively performance poetry, emerging voices and events for young people. Huge thanks to Clive, Jonathan and the whole BLF team for gifting us the day and folding us into their brilliant programme. Full Birmingham Literature Festival Programme

VERVE Poetry and Spoken Word Festival hosts an annual Poetry Festival in Birmingham, Online Poetry Workshop series, and Poetry Book Shop. VERVE FESTIVAL of POETRY & SPOKEN WORD Subscribe to our newsletter Email* Join I want to subscribe to your mailing list. * subscription options I'd like to subscribe to Poem of the Month only. I'd like to subscribe to festival specific events, tickets and news. I'd like to subscribe for online workshops only. I'd like everything please! Feb 24-28, 2027 'VERVE Poetry Festival Stands at the beating heart of all that is poetry, and all that might be. Bibrant, alive, provactive and curious - we need more festivals like this.' - VERVE Patron Joelle Taylor T. S. Eliot Prize-winning poet, former UK Slam Champion, and founder of SLAMbassadors, whose work has electrified international stages and earned her a fellowship of The Royal Society of Literature ABOUT Not just an annual 5 day poetry festival! We also host monthly open mic nights, quarterly featured poetry, a year long Poetry Collective for new writers, and a sell out workshop series featuring established poets all year long. CONTACT VERVE VERVE has cultivated a reputation for its dynamic and celebratory approach to programming poetry of every kind, whether it be raucous spoken word events, quiet poetry readings, studious workshops, immersive poetry, collaborative projects, or open mic. MISSION & HISTORY LOCATION BIRMINGHAM @ THE HIVE / THE HIPPODROME / GLEE CLUB / CHERRY REDS / ONLINE INFO 'Being at the Verve Poetry Festival feels like an instant buzz of energy. It comes from every direction: the vibrant diversity of the audiences, the imaginative programming, the connection with other poets at every stage in their careers. It is the poetry festival that Birmingham richly deserves'. - VERVE Patron Imtiaz Dharker Multi-award-winning poet, artist and filmmaker, recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, former Chancellor of Newcastle University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, whose work has been studied on the UK national curriculum. OUR PATRONS Imtiaz Dharker A Pakistani-born British poet, artist, and video film maker. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for her English poetry and was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University from January 2020. She is a prescribed poet on the British AQA GCSE English syllabus and her most recent collection is Shadow Reader (Bloodaxe, 2024). She received the Cholmondeley Award, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Imtiaz has appeared at VERVE three times including a career review interview event with Poetry Unbound in 2024. Joelle Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry. Her collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. This was followed up in November 2025 by Maryville (Bloomsbury) which continues the story started in C+NTO . Her novel of inter-connecting stories The Night Alphabet was published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has appeared at VERVE four times including our very first festival in 2017. Hannah Silva A writer and performer working in sound poetry, radio, and experimental non-fiction. She has an MFA in Theatre Practice and a PhD on poetry in performance from Stirling University. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career fellow at Queen Mary University, London. Her most recent work is the performative non-fiction book My Child, the Algorithm (Footnote, 2023). Hannah has appeared at VERVE three times, including the first festival in 2017 and always completely memorably. Daljit Nagra is a poet, professor of poetry, presenter of a weekly poetry programme on Radio, former Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and Lead Advisor to Poetry By Heart. He has won The Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and Cholmondeley Award. His next collection, Yiewsley , is published with Faber in May 2026. Daljit has appeared at VERVE three times including our popular zoom workshop series and was the first poet to read at our very first festival in 2017. 'VERVE has hand-crafted community, aspiration and pride in the Birmingham poetry and spoken word scene out of pure passion, quirk and creative ideas over the past almost-decade. VERVE is a central reason why Birmingham is seen as a centre and beacon for poetry and development.' - Jazmine Gardosi Jasmine Gardosi is a previous Birmingham Poet Laureate, a BBC Words First finalist, and the 2021 UK Slam Champion, known for her electrifying performances blending poetry, beatboxing, and gender identity. OUR PARTNERS STAY IN THE LOOP SUBSCRIBE Subscribe to our newsletter Email* Join I want to subscribe to your mailing list. * subscription options I'd like to subscribe to Poem of the Month only. I'd like to subscribe to festival specific events, tickets and news. I'd like to subscribe for online workshops only. I'd like everything please! CONTACT VERVE

Join us for a full day of poetry at Ledbury Poetry Festival Sunday 28th June 2026! Five unmissable events: VERVE Open Door open mic (11.30am), Pamphlet Hour with AV Bridgwood, Ilisha Thiru Purcell & Zain Rishi (1.30pm), Elle Dillon-Reams' visceral solo show mashup (3pm), our first-ever Queer headline event with Leo Boix, Keith Jarrett & Peter Scalpello hosted by Joelle Taylor (4.30pm), and the riotous Dice Slam (6.30pm). Tickets from £6–£10. See you there! BOOK YOUR TICKET VIEW PROGRAMME A note from our founder, Stuart Bartholomew. We may be down but we’re most definitely not out. Having to cancel our annual Birmingham city centre poetry festival for the first time since 2017 due to funding issues has been painful and difficult. But the support of our friends and supporters has been both heart-warming and energising. None more so than from Amy and the team at Ledbury who have saved our year by offering us a day at their brilliant festival! We are grateful beyond words. With one eye on the marginalised among us and another on the unique timbre of our bustling and cacophonous home city, we dearly hope you will enjoy what we have to offer. We can’t wait to welcome you! VIEW THE FULL LEDBURY PROGRAMME: ledburypoetry.org.uk/home/whats-on/ VIEW PROGRAMME Ledbury Poetry Festival, Burgage Hall, Ledbury. Herefordshire, HR8 1DS. Sunday 28th June 2026. EVENT PROGRAMME. OPEN DOOR OPEN MIC. 11.30 - 1pm. FOR FOUR YEARS VERVE Poetry Festival have been holding monthly open mic nights in The Jewellery Quarter which provide a platform for both fledgling and dab hand poets to perform their work in a supportive environment. This year VERVE Open Door is landing at Ledbury! This is the chance for you to grace the festival stage with your very own poems, or simply come and enjoy the fun! With regular host Rick Sanders AKA Willis the Poet. BOOK YOUR TICKET PAMPHLET HOUR with AV Bridgewood, Ilisha Thiru Percell and Zain Rishi with host Zakariye. 1.30 - 2.30pm. OUR SEMI REGULAR pamphlet focussed event brings three stellar pamphleteers from some of our favourite indie poetry presses together to chat about this glorious format and read some of their poetry! AV Bridgwood will read from Snack (Ignition Press, 2025), Ilisha Thiru Purcell from What She Said (VERVE Poetry Press, 2025), and Zain Rishi from Noon (Emma Press, 2026). BOOK YOUR TICKET HoneyBEE & MEAT: A bespoke special by Elle Dillon-Reams. 3pm - 4pm. For one hour only, multi-award-winning poet and performer Elle Dillon-Reams brings something entirely new to Ledbury - a bespoke collision of her two critically acclaimed solo shows, HoneyBEE and MEAT, woven together with brand new spoken word pieces created exclusively for this festival. This is an hour of spoken word that lives at the crossroads of the lyric and the visceral. Theatre that knows how to wound and how to hold. Words with teeth and tenderness - queer, unflinching, and full of hard-won joy and rebellious hope. BOOK YOUR TICKET QUEER POETRY HEADLINE EVENT: Leo Biox, Keith Jarrett, and Peter Scalpello, with host Joelle Taylor. 4:30 - 6pm. OUR FIRST EVER Queer headline event features three incredible poets, all giants in their way on the contemporary UK poetry scene. We’re thrilled to have Leo Boix with us reading from his brilliant recent collection, Southernmost: Sonnets (Chatto, 2025). Joining Leo are Keith Jarrett and Peter Scalpello. This is incredibly Keith's first time at a VERVE event. His most recent publication, Hide Me Under the Blood and I Shall Be Satisfied (Bad Betty, 2026) is a Poetry Book Society Spring Recommendation. Peter joins us to celebrate publication of his wonderful second full collection, Mirrorstage (Cipher Press, 2026). BOOK YOUR TICKET DICE SLAM: Devised by Bohdan Piasecki. 6.30 - 8pm. IN OUR 'DICE SLAM' our 'competitors' - Elle Dillon-Reams, Keith Jarrett, Zain Rishi and Zakariye - will give it their best slam shot, however the 'judges' - a secret selection of Birmingham poetry stalwarts - will need to adapt their comments to scores provided by the roll of a dice, good, bad or ugly. Join us for what will be a lively, vastly contentious and ultimately fun poetry slam with a difference! BOOK YOUR TICKET

VERVE FESTIVAL of POETRY & SPOKEN WORD Experience more poetry for your money with one of our FESTIVAL PASSES . £60/£45 (cons) FESTIVAL PASS £35/£26 (cons) SATURDAY PASS £20/£15 (cons) SUNDAY PASS £50/£35 (cons) ONLINE PASS FEBRUARY 13th - 16th 2025 FULL LINE-UP & EVENT PROGRAMME BELOW ALL EVENTS POETRY SPOKEN WORD WORKSHOPS YOUNG PEOPLE SPOKEN WORD VERVE X LOUD POETRY SLAM Birmingham Heat Thursday - 7pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP LYRIC SHAME Susannah Dickey Friday - 3:30pm More Info Book Tickets POETRY FRIDAY NIGHT HEADLINE EVENT Dzifa Benson, Anthony Joseph, Richard Scott with host Helen Bowell Friday - 8:30pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets YOUNG PEOPLE POETRY SOCIETY YOUNG POETS OPEN MIC Saturday - 11:00am More Info Book Stream Book Tickets SPOKEN WORD POETRY PERFORMANCE LECTURE Susannah Dickey Saturday - 1pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP THE SWERVE Ruth Padel Saturday - 3pm More Info Book Tickets SPOKEN WORD BIG GAY POETRY NIGHT Joelle Taylor, Kandace Siobhan Walker & Sanah Ahsan Saturday - 8pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets SPOKEN WORD OUR POETRY FESTIVAL COMPETITION EVENT Hannah Lowe Sunday - 11am More Info Book Stream Book Tickets POETRY LAUNCHING THE NEW CARTHAGINIANS Nick Makoha Sunday - 1pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP WHICHING AND PITCHING The Emma Press Sunday 4pm More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP SPEAKING THE SILENCES : language of the lacuna Scarlett Ward Friday - 1pm More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP TURNING MOVEMENT INTO POETRY Dzifa Benson Friday - 4pm More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP MAKING THE ORDINARY EXTRAORDINARY Laurie Bolger Saturday - 9:30am More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP ANCESTRY, INTERTEXTUALITY & GHOSTS Richard Scott Saturday - 12:00pm More Info Book Tickets POETRY MAGMA MATTERS: Past, Present and Future Various Magma Regular and Specific Issue Editors Saturday - 2:30pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets SPOKEN WORD POETRY UNBOUND SPECIAL Imtiaz Dharker with Padraig O Tuama. Saturday - 4:30pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP THE WALL AS THIN AS A WREN's BONE Carrie Etter Sunday - 9:30am More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP VALENTINES HOT & COLD Anthony Vahni Capildeo Sunday - 12pm More Info Book Tickets POETRY SUNDAY HEADLINE EVENT Helen Calcutt, Carrie Etter, Ruth Padel, Padraig O Tuama Sunday 2:30pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets SPOKEN WORD VERVE CLOSING GALA WITH OPEN MIC Hosted by Sam J Grudgings Sunday 4:30pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A POEM – a playful revolution Ellora Sutton Friday - 1:30pm More Info Book Tickets POETRY THE PAMPHLET HOUR Laurie Bolger, Troy Cabida, Betty Doyle, Ellora Sutton Friday - 7pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP THE SONNET: INSIDE & OUTSIDE FORM Anthony Joseph Saturday - 10:00am More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP AFTER POEMS Theresa Lola Saturday - 12:30pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP FINDING MARY: IRISH ANCESTRY Helen Calcutt Saturday - 2:30pm More Info Book Tickets POETRY SATURDAY NIGHT HEADLINE EVENT Theresa Lola, Victoria Kennefick, Anthony Vahni Capildeo with host Jo Bell Saturday - 6pm More Info Book Stream Book Tickets WORKSHOP YOU. YOU. YOU. The Lyric Address in Poetry Padraig O Tuama Sunday - 10am More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP A FAMILY AFFAIR Victoria Kennefick Sunday - 12:30pm More Info Book Tickets WORKSHOP SOUNDSCAPE IN POETRY Aoife Lyall Sunday 2:30pm More Info Book Tickets

SPOKEN WORD POETRY PERFORMANCE LECTURE Susannah Dickey LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Saturday - 1pm PRICE £8 / £6 Book Tickets Book Stream Why Not You? In this year’s Poetry Performance Lecture, we join Susannah Dickey in an innovative exploration of the challenges to romantic intimacy posed by the climate crisis. In this new performance piece, set on the island of Hydra, where cars are banned, stray cats outnumber the population, and forest fires encroach, we will be forced to approach language differently – subjugating the ‘I’-centric quality of historic lyric to include the non-human, as both subject and collaborative force. In creating this ecopoetics of intimacy, the shame of romantic egotism becomes a generative space for thinking collectively about the earth and our place within it. This is a performance in which the speaker wants desperately to communicate love in a different way, using the art form best suited to interrogating language, interrogating selfhood: poetry. The Verve Performance-Lecture (a stylised form of teaching-as-performance, originating from contemporary art practice), invites a poet to create a new piece of work fusing academic discourse with poetry and spoken word on a subject of their choosing. Brought to you in association with the Poetry School.

Poem of the Month, VERVE Open Door Free Poetry Open Mic, Free Young Person Poetry Programme at VERVE Spoken Word Festival, Mentorship and Supporting National Grass Root Poetry Nights. * for real * COMMUNITY POETRY PROJECTS If you don't know, now you know we run a series of free poetry events, actitivities and opportunities as VERVE Poetry Festival. We make zero profit. Everything we do goes back into poets and poetry culture. Take a look at what we do below. VERVE OPEN DOOR On the third Tuesday of every month we host an entirely free open mic at THE HIVE in Birmingham with a FREE poetry workshop in the day. We'd say it sells out every time but its free so selling out make no sense at all! There's free hot drinks and our founder (also the founder of VERVE POETRY PRESS) is almost always in attendance, you might say he's scouting for poetry talent. We've seen a few poets make there way from beginners to published poets. We do it because we love it! THE COLLECTIVE The Collective is a circular initiative developing 12 newbie poets into practicing artists. We ran it with no funding, no money, entirely for free from 2023-2024. The Collective Included; 2x poetry retreat days. 1-2-1 mentorship with a poetry publisher. Monthly writing circles. Monthly workshops. 4x Sharing events at venues in the city. We're strategising the next cohort and will create a dedicated page once we've got our ducks in a row. Previous cohort members have gone on to publish books, feature at international poetry festivals and national events. SUPPORTING NATIONAL GRASS ROOT POETRY & SPOKEN WORD NIGHTS We support grass root poetry and spoken word nights by paying them to feature at our festival INCLUDING; Empower Poetry The Big Gay Poetry Night I AM LOUD Scottish Poetry Slam Run Your Mouth Tell it to the Music We're structuring a funding stream from VERVE to support grass root events within their community, money to help with running costs, paying poets and marketing - with your help of course. Watch this space! YOUNG PPL & CHILDREN We host free activities including workshops, performances and reading opportunities in partnership with Writing West Midlands, The Poetry Society and The Poetry School. This is our initiative to support the NEXT GEN of poets via a free young persons event programme as part of the VERVE POETRY AND SPOKEN WORD FESTIVAL.

< Back This imaginative poetry workshop invites writers to explore the landscapes, places, and people that call to them. Saturday - 2:30pm FINDING MARY: IRISH ANCESTRY Hippodrome Theatre, Hurst Street, Birmingham, UK Drawing on Helen’s own poem, ‘Visiting Mary’, which details her Irish ancestry, we will identify and creatively excavate those, as-of-yet, unmet spaces and faces that we long to journey into and understand. Through the magic of language and the mind, writers will immerse themselves in this experience, and in parallel, observe the shape and terrain of their inner worlds, and why this soulful part of us seeks connection with these external spaces. Poets are encouraged to come lightly prepared with a few ideas around familial history, but this isn’t essential. ABOUT THE POET HELEN Calcutt is a choreographer, dance aritst, and award-winning poet. Her pamphlet ‘Somehow’ (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), was a PBS Winter Bulletin Pamphlet & Poetry School Book of the Year (2020). Her anthology ‘Eighty-Four’ (Verve Press, 2019), was a Saboteur Award shortlist, and a Poetry Wales Book of the Year, 2019. Her full-length collection ‘Feeling All the Kills’, a verse account of assault, and recovery, was published by Pavilion Poetry, April 2024. Her notable research into text-to-dance translation has been supported by Arts Council England, the Birmingham REP Theatre, and One Dance U.K. She has received awards from the Society of Authors, and her writing appears in the Guardian, the Huffington Post, Poetry Ireland, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, Wild Court, and MPT Magazine, amongst others. Helen was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Loughborough University for her outstanding contribution to the arts in 2023. She is currently creating and touring a dance adaptation of Max Porter’s ‘Grief Is the Thing with Feathers’ with her company Beyond Words. WORKSHOP £24.50 / £18.50 Saturday - 2:30pm Book Tickets

WORKSHOP SPEAKING THE SILENCES : language of the lacuna Scarlett Ward LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Friday - 1pm PRICE £16 / £12 Book Tickets In this workshop the unsaid takes form and silence speaks volumes. We will draw inspiration from the unspoken narratives that shape our lives, and write around the lacunas we have learned to carry. What secrets do we haul, whose voices are missing, and what effects does it have on our identities when large cavities form in our histories? ABOUT THE POET Scarlett Ward is the Staffordshire poet laureate 2024-2026. Her debut collection ‘Ache’ was released by Verve Press in 2019, and she went on to be a finalist for the women’s poets prize by the Rebecca Swift foundation. As well as performing at Derby Literature Festival and Verve Festival, her poetry can be found in Nine Arches, 21 poems and Broken Sleep anthologies.

POETRY SUNDAY HEADLINE EVENT Helen Calcutt, Carrie Etter, Ruth Padel, Padraig O Tuama LOCATION BIRMINGHAM HIPPODROME ABOUT THE EVENT TIME Sunday 2:30pm PRICE £10/£8 Book Tickets Book Stream Our final headline event of the weekend brings not three but four wonderful poets together to read and talk about their work. Birmingham's very own Helen Calcutt will read from her break out collection, Feeling All The Kills (Pavilion, 2024). Carrie Etter will read from her fifth full collection, Grief's Alphabet (Seren, 2024). Poetry royalty, Ruth Padel's most recent collection, Girl (Chatto, 2024) is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Joining them, host of Poetry Unbound Padraig O Tuama will read from his brand new collection, Kitchen Hymns (Cheerio, 2025). This amazing line-up, a real treat, will be hosted for us by Jonathan Davidson from Writing West Midlands and founder of Birmingham Literature Festival.

THANKYOU! YOUR MEMBERSHIP IS CONFIRMED We are SO happy to welcome you as a VERVE member FOR LIFE! Your welcome email will follow shortly and will give you full details on how to claim your discount on all VERVE items going forwards. Your membership card and pin-badge will arrive in the post in the next few days. It's LOVELY to have you as part of our poetry communtiy. Take care! VERVE x WRITE, CONNECT and GROW in our POETRY WORKSHOPS JOIN OUR SUBSTACK COMMUNITY DISCOVER BOLD, BRILLIANT POETRY IN OUR BOOKSHOP

The winning November poem for VERVE Poetry Festivals monthly poetry competition, Poem of the Month. Naoise Gale Bulimia as Viral Sensation Thin is in again, product of a twenty-year trend cycle and I must be getting old or sick because, nostalgia, that suspicious pop-up, turns the forums nobler, edgier, in my memory than what followed. Sick or old, I remember early-internet days of blog post and frenzy: the supermarket’s aisles gleamed to porcelain; desire persistent as a knife tugging at meat. I remember scrolling the buffets of bulimics — bursting fondant, cheese pull so erotic — years of hungry photographs and later the sticky-lipped Mukbangs of wet chew and cut before swallow, the obvious chew-and-spit of it, dribbling orgasms of bloodshot edits, viewers pausing their hunger with sensory distraction. Profitable bulimia; self-funding bulimia – and the unspoken change as they flipped to restriction: fat oozing cream-cakes; golden spills of butter; violent-pink lobster claws replaced with sugar-free jelly slurped up like molluscs. And of course everything delicious- best-ever-got-to-try-it, licking salt from frosted lips as they groaned like pornographic mattresses. Meanwhile, viewers in the pulsing dark of their rooms, alone, hunger lodged in their throats like fishbones. SHORTLIST the rules of the marshmallow experiment Julie Runacres indigestion Liam Bates Raised on the tail-end of heroin chic Abbie Day Cut Scenes Suyin Du Bois Everything Ice Cream Liz Lefroy READ ALL SHORTLISTED ON OUR SUBSTACK

< Back Exploring the many voices of poetry: the art of YOU. Sunday - 10am YOU. YOU. YOU. The Lyric Address in Poetry Hippodrome Theatre, Hurst Street, Birmingham, UK A poem is a word event going in many directions at once. Sometimes the you of a poem is a specific person, other times it's the poet, other times it's a general audience, and still other times, there's no you at all, so the poem addresses itself to the world, or an unnamed and unsummoned character. In this talk, Padraig O Tuama will explore the direction, implication and inspiration contained in the lyric address in contemporary poetry. ABOUT THE POET Pádraig Ó Tuama’s poetry and prose centre around themes of language, power, conflict and religion. His work has won acclaim in circles of poetry, politics, psychotherapy and conflict analysis. His formal qualifications (PhD, MTh and BA) cover creative writing, literary criticism and theology. Alongside this, he pursued vocational training in conflict analysis, specialising in groupwork. His published work is in the fields of poetry, anthology, essay, memoir, theology and conflict. A new volume of poetry — Kitchen Hymns — is forthcoming from CHEERIO in mid 2024. Profiled in The New Yorker , Pádraig’s poems have been featured in Poetry Ireland Review, Academy of American Poets , Harvard Review, New England Review, Raidió Teilifís Éireann’s Poem of the Week , and the Kenyon Review. Pádraig has told stories at The Moth , has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, has presented programmes on poetry and language for BBC Radio 4; and has extended interviews with On Being , with Kim Hill on Radio NZ , and Soul Search on Radio National (Australia). In addition, he has interviewed poets and public figures including former President of Ireland Mary McAleese, Hanif Abdurraqib, The Edge, Sarah Perry, Joy Harjo, Billy Collins and Martin Hayes. WORKSHOP £24.50 / £18.50 Sunday - 10am Book Tickets