Patience Agbabi is a poet much celebrated for paying equal homage to literature and performance. Born in London to Nigerian parents and fostered in a white English family in North Wales, her work moves nimbly between cultures, dialects and voices, and between page and stage. Join us for what promises to be her striking and compelling Southwell debut.

Patience Agbabi’s poetry has been featured on radio and TV worldwide and she has spent over 20 years celebrating the written and spoken word. Her poem, ‘The Doll’s House’, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2014.  She studied English Language and Literature at Oxford University and is a former Poet Laureate of Canterbury. The author of four books, her latest, Telling Tales (Canongate, 2014), is a vivid retelling of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales for the 21st century and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Prize for New Work in Poetry 2014 and Wales Book of the Year 2015.

“The liveliest versions of Chaucer you're likely to read.” Simon Armitage on Telling Tales

“…honest, darkly funny and endlessly creative, she takes the sonnet, chats it up, tattoos it, gives it some motherly advice and then sends it away again.”  The List