POETRY WEEKEND : 5-6 SEPT 2026

SAVE THE DATE !

FANTASTIC POETS READING AND GLORIOUS WORKSHOPS FOR POETRY LOVERS!

POETRY READINGS and WORKSHOPS with award winning

ISABELLE BAAFI, RACHEL LONG,

JEN FEROZE, STEPHEN BOYCE, RUTH SHARMAN,

‘SUFFER FOR ME’ DUO, BAZ LEWIS,  and many more

with funding from the T S ELIOT FOUNDATION 

♥

ISABELLE BAAFI (main pic) is an award winning poet, and the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and is longlisted for the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She won the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023 and has been published in Granta, the TLS, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, The London Magazine and elsewhere. She edits at Poetry London and Magma. (Pic: Jolade Olusanya)

ISABELLE BAAFI will be running a workshop £15 (ticket info coming soon, and limited places!) and giving a reading (FREE to public, with thanks to our funders The T S ELIOT FOUNDATION)

AND, BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND the award winning and brilliant JEN FEROZE.

RACHEL LONG published her debut collection, My Darling from the Lions in 2020 (Picador). It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Jhalak Prize Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour, and named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME. Her second collection, Sparrow on the Rooftop, will be published by Chatto & Windus, in June 2026.

Her individual poems have appeared in The Guardian, Poetry, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The London Magazine, and Granta. She has curated and co-produced multiple programmes for BBC Radio 4, and literary events for Tate.

Jen Feroze will give a workshop on Sunday 6th (£15) and also a reading (FREE), AND SHE WILL BE WRITING POEMS ON THE SPOT at her table, on her manual typewriter, all day, that she will the give you, at only £5 per poem. Last year this was a hit! Don’t miss a chance to have a piece of bespoke poetry wisdom written for you, or someone of your choosing, by Jen.

Jen Feroze, pictured 

STEPHEN BOYCE: Prize-winning poet Stephen Boyce ‘makes it real in a seamless weave of thought, perception and emotion’ (Philip Gross). Stephen will read from his new collection Marnhull Solitudes, which evokes the natural spirit of Dorset’s countryside, and other recent work. Author of three previous collections and three pamphlets Stephen is co-founder of Winchester Poetry Festival, former chair of ArtfulScribe and a resident of north Dorset. ‘No-one else I have ever read has made me exclaim over a description of gravel! Wonderful!’ (Robyn Bolam). stephenboycepoetry.com

RUTH SHARMAN: Ruth Sharman is a prize-winning poet and freelance translator whose work has been published widely in national newspapers, magazines and anthologies, including Bloodaxe’s Staying Alive series of world poetry. She is the author of Birth of the Owl Butterflies (Picador) and Scarlet Tiger(Templar’s Straid Collection Award for 2016). In 2019, she received a Society of Authors Foundation Grant to revisit South India – where she was born – and produce the poems for her third collection, Rain Tree (Templar, 2022), and she is currently working on a fourth.

♥    ♥    ♥

SAT EVENING VARIETY EVENT

LIVE AND WILD – INSPIRATIONAL –

NOT TO BE MISSED!

SUFFER FOR ME is a London-based duo composed of poet Elena Cruz and musician Grady Moomaw. Their music combines shifting soundscapes with spoken word to offer an emotional release despite a chaotic political backdrop. Together they have performed in art galleries and sold-out music venues across London.

Elena Cruz is a Milwaukee-born writer and poet. Her debut novel will be published by Red Clay Books in 2029. Before moving to London, she worked in the US as a reporter, winning the National Newspaper Association Awards first place for business writing, 2021.

Grady Moomaw is a multi-instrumentalist originally from Raleigh, North Carolina. In Suffer for Me, he incorporates live synth work, creative sampling, and classical guitar — seeking unlikely connections between styles from across the world.

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BAZ: Baz Lewis is a writer from Dorset and The Story Works’ Young Poet Laureate for Bournemouth. He is Poetry Editor at Bournemouth Journal and was Writer in Residence at Upton Country Park. He has performed at events across the country, and has been published in ANMLY, Eche, Full House, and elsewhere.

BAZ, pictured

Running order

SAT 5TH SEPT

PM: ISABELLE BAAFI READING AND WORKSHOP (time tbc)

RACHEL LONG – READING AND WORKSHOP

EVE: MUSIC AND POETRY VARIETY EVENT – WILD, INSPIRATIONAL AND NOT TO BE MISSED!

FEATURING: ELLA CRUZ with

+ BAZ LEWIS +

SUN 6TH SEPT

RUTH SHARMAN + STEPHEN BOYCE – READING

JEN FEROZE – READING AND WORKSHOP POEMS ON THE SPOT ALL DAY

PURBECK LOCAL POETS and more tbc

More to be announced asap

TICKETS FOR WORKSHOPS ON SALE SOON !

We are hugely grateful to the T S Eliot Foundation for their support and funding, without which this poetry weekend would not be possible ♥