Lyra Fest and Renaissance One is in partnership to present an unforgettable evening that places the art and culture of liming centrestage in a celebration of Caribbeanness. Join international, national and local poets and wordsmiths of Caribbean heritage for a dynamic and unforgettable evening of poetry, discussion and community togetherness at Bristol Old Vic.
The event includes live performances from international headline poet Shara McCallum (OCM Bocas Caribbean Poetry Prize winner), legendary UK-based poets Anthony Joseph (T. S. Eliot Prize winner) and Malika Booker (2 x Forward Prize winner), alongside exhilarating poetry performances from Bristol poets including Sukina Noor, Kaycee Hill and Poetical Dash and hosted by Muneera Pilgrim and Edson Burton.
The evening will also include panel discussion that explores themes of diasporas, nature and wellbeing and features Shara McCallum, Melanie Abrahams, Zakiya McKenzie and Shawn Sobers, plus feelgood music from DJ Style.
The evening takes on a ‘liming’ aspect of going with the flow or hanging out, a cultural practice from Trinidad which happens in many parts of the Caribbean and around the globe. Add poetry and music to this, and you’ve an occasion for socialising, art and togetherness. The event will be BSL interpreted.
PANELLIST AND PERFORMER BIOS
Shara McCallum is from Jamaica, of Jamaican and Venezuelan parentage, and the author of seven books, published in the US & UK, most recently Behold (Peepal Tree Press, 2026). She is the recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Musgrave Medal, NEA Poetry Fellowship, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and an OCM Bocas Caribbean Poetry Prize and her writing has been featured in short films and public installations. From 2021 - 2022 she served as the Penn State Laureate. Currently a Cheney Creative Fellow at the University of Leeds until 2027, she is also a Professor of English at Penn State University.
Anthony Joseph is a Trinidad-born poet, novelist, musician, and academic based in London. He has been described as one of the pioneers of the black avant-garde wave from the 90’s in Britain. Well regarded for blending surrealism, jazz, and Caribbean creole in his writing and performance, he is the author of several poetry collections, novels, novellas, articles and essays. In 2023, he won the T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry collection Sonnets for Albert. He is a lecturer in Creative Writing at King's College London. Joseph tours widely, both as an independent artist and also with his band, The Spasm band, to festivals and events around the globe.
Malika Booker is a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage and a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. She co-founded writers collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. A two times T.S. Eliot Prize winner, her pamphlet Breadfruit received a Poetry Society recommendation, and her poetry collection Pepper Seed was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre prize. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, Complete Works Fellow and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company. She is the first woman to have won the Forward Prize for Best Single poem twice: The Little Miracles (2020) and Libation (2023).
Zakiya McKenzie is a writer and a Senior Research Associate in History at the University of Bristol. Her PhD from the University of Exeter focused on Caribbean journalists and newspapers in post war Britain. In 2023, McKenzie won the Olivette Otele Prize for research in Black British studies for her work on the Empire Windrush as a cultural motif. As a creative writer, her writing is various including explorations of botanical knowledge and the material legacies of colonialism. She is the author of Testimonies on the History of Jamaica Vol. 1 (Rough Trade Books, 2021), which reimagines archival fragments of the Caribbean's past.
Shawn Sobers is a writer, anthropologist, filmmaker, photographer, and Professor of Socially Engaged Practice at UWE in Bristol. His book Black Everyday Lives, Material Culture and Narrative: Tings in de House (Routledge, 2023) explores Black British history through objects in rooms of a West Indian family home from the 1970s–80s. His work has been published, exhibited, and screened internationally. Sobers has directed documentaries for BBC1, ITV, Channel 4, and produced projects on heritage, Rastafari and Ethiopian cultures, transatlantic enslavement, youth creativity and youth homelessness.
Melanie Abrahams has been making multidisciplinary projects for 25 years, as a curator, consultant, a former artist's agent and mentor. As founder of Renaissance One, she has pushed for greater diversity and used her oratory and ideas to develop wellbeing spaces and community progression as well as to work closely with Caribbean, British and global voices including Jean 'Binta' Breeze, Robert Antoni, Shivanee Ramlochan, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Amiri Baraka, Bernardine Evaristo, Anthony Joseph, Caryl Phillips, Malika Booker and Gary Younge.