Bloodaxe Poets at Newcastle Poetry Festival 2024
This year's Newcastle Poetry Festival, taking place from 9 to 11 May 2024, will feature several Bloodaxe poets. All events take place at Northern Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne. More information, plus Festival day and weekend passes (including digital-only attendance), can be found here. (Tickets on sale from 4 April 2024.)
Imtiaz Dharker will be appearing at two events at the festival. On Thursday 9 May at 4pm, she will be introducing a Global Reading event as part of the Northern Poetry Symposium, featuring readings from Amelia Loulli, Rolf Hermann and CAConrad. Imtiaz will then be reading alongside former UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy on Friday 10 May at 6.30pm. Imtiaz Dharker will be launching her new collection Shadow Reader, which is published by Bloodaxe in May 2024.
Abigail Parry and Jane Clarke will be reading together at an event in the evening of Thursday 9 May at 6.30pm. Both poets were shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize last year for their latest collections. Abigail Parry’s second collection I Think We’re Alone Now was published in November 2023 and Jane Clarke’s third collection A Change in the Air was published in May 2023 and was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
Carolyn Forché will be hosting a Northern Poetry Symposium panel discussion on ‘Poetry of Witness and Refuge’ on Friday 10 May at 12pm. She will be joined by fellow Bloodaxe poet Marjorie Lotfi, as well as Charlotte Shevchenko Knight and Yousif M. Qasmiyeh. Marjorie Lotfi’s debut poetry collection The Wrong Person to Ask was a winner of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize and received a PBS Special Commendation. Carolyn Forché will also be reading alongside Suji Kwock Kim on Saturday 11 May at 6pm. Carolyn Forché has published four collections with Bloodaxe, most recently In the Lateness of the World (2020), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and a 2021 Pulitzer Finalist in Poetry.
Diana Anphimiadi will be reading at a Women Poets in Translation event on Friday 10 May at 2pm. Diana will be joined by her translators, the leading Georgian translator Natalia Bukia-Peters and award-winning British poet Jean Sprackland, as well as fellow Georgian poet Salome Benidze and her translator Helen Mort. Diana Anphimiadi’s Why I No Longer Write Poems, the first full-length Georgian-English selection of her poetry, was published by Bloodaxe Books with the Poetry Translation Centre in 2022 and was onglisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
John Challis will be hosting ‘A Walk to Morden Tower’, a series of performances by Newcastle University students inspired by the iconic Newcastle literary landmark, on Saturday 11 May at 10am. John Challis’ debut collection The Resurrectionists was published by Bloodaxe in 2021 and was chosen as one of the ‘Best poetry books of the year 2021’ by Jane Wilkinson in Poetry News.
Fleur Adcock will be reading alongside Liz Berry on Saturday 11 May at 3pm. Bloodaxe Books published Fleur Adcock’s Poems 1960-2000 in 2000, followed by five later collections. Poems 1960-2000 and Hoard (2017) were Poetry Book Society Special Commendations while Glass Wings (2013) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Fleur Adcock’s Collected Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in hardback and paperback in February 2024, on her 90th birthday. In 2006 she was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and in 2019 the NZ Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry.
[04 April 2024]
