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Photo © Antonio Olmos
Photo © Nick Dennis
Poetry in the Pavilion
Will Burns and Hannah Copley
Thursday 10 April 2025
7.45 - 8.45pm; £10/£7
The Pavilion, The Parks Trust,
1300 Silbury Blvd, Campbell Park MK9 4AD
As we take Lit Fest to Campbell Park and the canal-side pavilion of The Parks Trust, whose work does so much to honour the environment in our city, we’re delighted to showcase two award-winning contemporary poets whose work addresses our relationship with the physical and natural world, and the flora and fauna around us: Hannah Copley, 2024 Laurel Prize Runner-up, and Will Burns, 2021 Winner of the Laurel Best First Collection Prize.
Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, established The Laurel Prize in 2020, saying ‘Over the course of my ten year Laureateship I want one of the headline projects to be a prize or award that recognises and encourages the resurgence of nature and environmental writing, currently taking place in poetry.’
In subsequent years, the Prize’s winners and shortlisted entries have ably documented and demonstrated the ability and willingness of poetry (and of poets) to rise to the challenge of addressing the importance – vital in the very truest sense – of our environment.
Will and Hannah will be performing their work and discussing their writing with poet Caroline Davies.
About Will Burns
Will Burns was born in London and lives in Buckinghamshire. He is the author of two poetry collections, Country Music and Natural Burial Ground, and one novel, The Paper Lantern, for which he was named as an Observer debut novelist of the year in 2022. He is a long-time contributor to the online nature-writing journal, Caught by the River, and an editor at Rough Trade Books.
More about Will:
About Hannah Copley
Hannah Copley is the author of Speculum (Broken Sleep Books, 2021); and Lapwing (Pavilion Poetry, LUP, 2024). The latter, which was a Poetry Book Society Summer 2024 Recommendation, won second prize in the 2024 Laurel Prize and was nominated for the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize. Hannah is a poetry editor at the long-running literary magazine Stand. She also runs a regular poetry night at the Soho Poly and is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Westminster.
More about Hannah:
About Caroline Davies
Caroline Davies was born in Norfolk to Welsh parents and is learning to speak Welsh. She has an MA in Writing Poetry from the Poetry School, London and Newcastle University. Her books are Elements of Water (Green Bottle Press 2019), Convoy (2013 Cinnamon Press), Voices from Stone and Bronze (2016 Cinnamon Press). She co-wrote Connecting Threads with Ghusoun Rahhal, a literary response to the project bringing together Westbury Fabric and Fibre Guild and the Middle Eastern Cultural Group to share stories and stitching traditions.
More about Caroline: