Poetry Festival: Saturday Showcase

A performance showcase celebrating poets who write about identity – one of the most topical and important issues of our time.

Hosted by award-winning poet Anthony Anaxagorou – and including a special guest appearance from the Young People’s Laureate for London.

Line-up:

Jack Underwood is a poet and a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths College. His first collection Happiness was published by Faber in 2015 and was winner of the 2016 Somerset Maugham prize. He is currently writing a non-fiction book about poetry and uncertainty.

Sandeep Parmar is Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool where she co-directs Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing. Her books include The Marble Orchard and Eidolon – winner of the Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection.

Wayne Holloway-Smith's debut collection of poetry, Alarum, was shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize and was a Poetry Book Society guest selection. In 2016 won the Poetry Society's Geoffrey Dearmer Prize.

Caroline Bird has five collections of poetry published by Carcanet. Her most recent collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and The Ted Hughes Award. A two-time winner of the Foyles Young Poets Award, her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002 when she was 15.

Anthony Anaxagorou is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. He has published nine volumes of poetry, a spoken word EP and a collection of short stories.

Momtaza Mehri is a poet, essayist and literary researcher. Her poetry has been featured in DAZED, Buzzfeed, Vogue, BBC Radio 4, Poetry Society of America and Poetry International. She is a Complete Works Fellow and winner of the 2017 Out-Spoken Page Poetry Prize.

This is part of Second Home Poetry Festival running from 6-9 June. All profits will be donated to The Rugby Portobello Trust who support programmes set up in response to the fire at Grenfell Tower.