RISE UP! A monthly celebration of poetry & the spoken word

Join us on Wednesday 20th December at 8pm to welcome poets Clare Shaw, Nairn Kennedy and Chloe Elliott.

Clare Shaw (they/them) has four poetry collections with Bloodaxe. Their latest collection Towards a General Theory of Love (2022) is a poetic interrogation of love and its absence: it attracted a Northern Writers’ Award, and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year 2022. Clare lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere, the Royal Literary Fund and the Arvon Foundation. With a background in mental health and education, Clare is an advocate for writing as a means of personal and social change.

Nairn Kennedy is a Leeds-based poet whose work has appeared in Orbis, Ink Sweat & Tears, The London Magazine, Stand, The North, Spelt and Under the Radar. He’s been a runner-up in the Ilkley Literature Festival Competition, longlisted in the National Poetry Competition, and highly commended in the Bridport, amongst others.

Chloe Elliott is a winner of the 2022 New Poets Prize as well as the 2020 Creative Future Writers’ Award. Her writing features in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, bath magg, Bedtime Stories for the End of the World, Magma, The North and Strix, amongst others. Her pamphlet, ‘encyclopedia’ is out with Smith|Doorstop in 2023. Her micro-chapbook, DREAM SIMULATION is also forthcoming with The Braag in Spring 2024. Currently, she works for Aesthetica and Modern Poetry in Translation.

To take part in the open mic, please email rise@bluebirdbakery.co.uk – free drink for every reader!

Doors at 7.30pm – event starts at 8.30pm and finishes at 10.30pm.