Experience Poetry as a family from Raymond Antrobus, Nikita Gill and Stephen Lightbown as part of Lyra festival 2024. Raymond Antrobus will be reading from his brand new picture book Terrible Horses.

Join us for a day of performance, music, dance, words and film marking Windrush and other journeys and featuring globally-recognised Caribbeans and trailblazers from Leeds Caribbean community including Arthur France, John Agard, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Malika Booker, Adam Lowe, Emily Zobel Marshall ,Graft and more in a festival curated by Melanie Abrahams and Omari Swanston-Jeffers. Taking place at Leeds Playhouse.

Join Alexandra Palace’s North London Book Fest 2024 for a literary celebration featuring debut and iconic authors with readings, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and book-signings across multiple stages at the Palace!

As part of this Patience Agbabi will read from her riveting time-travel adventure for readers aged 9-12 with a Black and neurodivergent protagonist. The Past Master talks about protecting our future and celebrating difference.

Watch a performance from internationally acclaimed poet and UniSlam judge John Agard. UniSlam 2024 is a poetry festival based around the UK and Ireland National Inter-University Poetry Slam. It’s your chance to see poets compete live on stage in Semi-Finals and a thrilling Grand Final.

Winner of both the 2023 T. S. Eliot and Forward Prizes for his second collection, Self-Portrait as Othello, poet and scholar Jason Allen-Paisant presents this year’s specially commissioned lecture. Allen-Paisant considers how poetry, in its formalising of grief and its deployment in funerary rites, can bring us closer to the truth. Don’t miss this powerful exploration of one of poetry’s most fundamental social and political functions.

To close out the information-packed GSCE In Action English programme, poet John Agard will provide a reading of his poetry to students. He will discuss the meaning behind his poems and answer questions from the audience, providing students with new ideas and inspiration.

An evening with John Agard, prize winning poet, playwright and short story writer, who will read from his widely prize nominated array of works including Windrush Child and Alternative Anthem. This will be in conversation with Melanie Abrahams and will take place on Saturday 2nd March.

Jason Allen-Paisant will take the stage alongside Seán Hewitt and Alycia Pirmohamed for the Friday evening headline event at Verve Poetry Festival. Hosted by Helen Bowell.

Patience Agbabi will be visiting Waterstones Chatham to sign copies of her Leap Cycle book series including the newest installment, The Past Master. A riveting time-travel adventure for readers aged 9–12 with a Black neurodivergent protagonist.

A sought-after poet, novelist and performer, Patience Agbabi has spent 20 years celebrating the written and spoken word. A former Poet Laureate of Canterbury, Agbabi has appeared on radio and TV and she has toured festivals and events around the world.

John Agard will be reading from Windrush Child and other stories at the Southbank Centre’s Imagine Children’s Festival.

A national and internationally acclaimed poet, playwright, short story writer, and performer, John Agard, over his long career has become known and loved for his playful, witty style and charismatic performances.

Join author Agbabi for the launch of The Past Master – the final book in the Leap Cycle quartet (a thrilling time-travel adventure series with a Black neurodivergent protagonist). The event is suitable for new and existing Leaplings.

The International Black Speculative Writing Symposium and Festival is a 3 day event which includes workshops, readings, speakers panels, interviews, discussions, bookclubs, advice sessions, book launches and performances.

Work with professional author, Patience Agbabi to hone your writing skills and learn how to craft a short story inspired by the future.

Join The Children’s Bookshow for a morning of poetry with lyrical geniuses John Agard and Grace Nichols live on stage at The Theatre Royal in Newcastle.

This will be an exhilarating, playful, and thought provoking performance full of delight.

Every child attending this performance will receive a FREE book by either John Agard or Grace Nichols to take home and keep!

Ty'rone Haughton's talk 'What Comes Next?' explores what it means to be Black and preparing to leave care, followed by a panel discussion

This is a FREE event but please reserve your space on eventbrite by following the link below.

Join us at Leeds Beckett University to experience a moving Renaissance One show, Unknown Soldier, written & performed by Seni Seneviratne

An informal networking event offering the opportunity to relax and make new connections in the poetry world over drinks and nibbles. This event will close with a special reading by Emily Zobel Marshall from her latest collection Bath of Herbs.

Join Serendipity Arts to celebrate the launch of Black History Month 2023 with Rum Punch and Poets. Local and international wordsmiths join force for a reasoning of reflections, social political commentary and expressions of Black joy.

Featuring Ty’rone Haughton, Carol Leeming MBE FRSA and Christian "Cubs The Poet" Davenport

Experience a moving one-woman performance and multi-media installation which brings to life the hidden family narrative of poet-artist Seni Seneviratne through recounting and imagining her father's experiences as a Royal Signalman in the North African Desert War.

Showtime approx. 2 hour from doors opening. Suitable for 14 +

Doors to open at 6:30pm, performance starts at 7pm. BSL interpretation provided.

Join us for the launch of Emily Zobel Marshall's beautifully crafted, honest and thoughtful first poetry collection.

Emily Zobel Marshall spent her childhood in a remote village in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales with her Black Caribbean mother and white English father.

Bath of Herbs is her beautifully crafted, honest and thoughtful first collection which explores the complexity of mixed-race, hybrid identities and relationships to the English and Welsh mountains, fells, rivers and shorelines from an ‘othered’, unmappable, positionality.

It honours the lives of Black and Brown women and asks how they can reclaim space, both practically and conceptually. It celebrates and mourns the unspoken pain and joys of motherhood; of menstrual cycles, childbirth, tending to sick children with life-threatening illnesses, the death of mothers, love in all its myriad forms and the desire to escape the constraints of domestic and family life towards different kinds of freedoms. It also revisits the confusing world of childhood; the inexplicable actions of adults and the bullies who despise perceived difference.

Emily will begin with an introduction to her poetry, reflecting on her process, her relationship with the natural world as a site of healing and her heritage. It will explore the power of the matrilineal line and her relationship to the writerly inheritance handed down from her grandfather, the Black Martiniquan writer, Joseph Zobel, her father, Anarchist Philosopher Peter Marshall and BBC Broadcaster Jenny Zobel, as well her upbringing on a commune and in an isolated smallholding in North Wales. She will read from her own work and from the work of poets that have inspired her.

This will be followed with a Q & A with Melanie Abrahams and readings. There will be complimentary wine and snacks and a Caribbean-style ‘lime’ to the tunes of a guest DJ.

This event is produced by Renaissance One supported by The Leeds Library and Leeds Beckett University

More information about Bath of Herbs : https://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/bath-herbs

Bio: Emily Zobel Marshall

Emily of French-Caribbean and British heritage and grew up in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales. She is a Reader in Postcolonial Literature at Leeds Beckett University..

Emily has had poems published in the Peepal Tree Press anthology Weighted Words (2021), Magma (‘The Loss’, Issue 75, 2019), Smoke Magazine (Issue 67, 2020), The Caribbean Writer (Vol 34, 2020, Vol 35, 2021 & Vol 36, 2021) and Stand (Vol. 19, No. 4). Her forthcoming collection, Bath of Herbs, to be published by Peepal Tree Press in July 2023 is described as ‘beautifully crafted, honest and thoughtful first collection which explores the complexity of mixed-race, hybrid identities and relationships to the English and Welsh mountains, fells, rivers and shorelines from an ‘othered’, unmappable, positionality.’

She is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields, including her books Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (published in 2012 by the University of the West Indies Press) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (published in 2019 by Rowman and Littlefield). She plays mas in Leeds West Indian carnival and has established a Caribbean Carnival Cultures research platform and network that aims to bring the critical, creative, academic and artistic aspects of carnival into dialogue with one another. She also consults arts and educational organisations on Decolonial methodologies and approaches.

Join us as we celebrate an evening of poetry & musical styling, launching SELF-PORTRAIT AS OTHELLO, the latest book by Leeds-Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant, & featuring guest poets Khadijah Ibrahiim & Kayo Chingonyi. Music by DJ Sensation.

This event is produced by Renaissance One and supported by The Collective Inc and Carcanet Press.

In this memoir in poems, Allen-Paisant steps into the body of Othello, refracting his travels across Europe through this figure. The result is a work about style and performance in myriad ways. For the speaker, the sweet spot often lies where it feels like a little bit of confusion, of displacement, even if the body language is one of bravado and dominance.

In her review for The Guardian, Fiona Sampson writes that, “Allen-Paisant makes the historical impasse [of Shakespeare’s Othello] an occasion for deep, generous interrogation of masculinity, and a linked elevation of the maternal that is at the heart of so many Caribbean and other families”, adding that “Self-Portrait As Othello celebrates representation, understanding and speech as acts of glorious resistance.”

John is an internationally acclaimed poet, playwright, short story writer, and performer. In 2021, he was awarded the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement for his outstanding contribution to literature, and has previously been awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is studied on the National Curriculum in GSCE English.

He is being supported by Charlotte Ansell, whose book ‘Deluge’ was a 2019 Poetry Book Society Winter recommendation, and Jessica Mookherjee, whose book ‘Tigress’ was shortlisted as best second collection in the Ledbury Munthe Prize in 2021.

A celebration of creativity, culture and arts, the event will showcase both established authors and new voices from Stormzy’s award-winning imprint at Penguin and beyond. Sponsored by Netflix, the festival will aim to demystify creative industries and inspire a new generation of creatives.

Celebrating homegrown British talent and multi-disciplinary creativity. Join us for an inspiring conversation between acclaimed author and musician Wretch 32, award-winning poet and playwright John Agard, and the Director of UK Film at Netflix Fiona Lamptey. The panel will explore the creative process − from how to develop and refine your ideas, to finding inspiration in unexpected places.