Dead [Women] Poets Society

Join our Squad grad Helen Bowell at the National Poetry Library for her latest instalment of Dead [Women] Poets Society.

Who are our literary mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers? How do the women who wrote before us affect our practice today?

The Dead [Women] Poets Society is a conversation between women/non-binary poets of the present and of the past. They’ve run events across England with poets such as Rachel Long, Helen Mort and Frances Leviston.

At this event, Zahrah Sheikh and Ruth Sutoyé, two poets of Octavia poetry collective, are resurrecting two dead women poets of colour.

By bringing writers to light to explore their histories, Sheikh and Sutoyé trace the influence of these poets of the past on their own writing today.