Poets for Movember
A Chorus of Men's Voices
Tuesday 12 November, Zoom, 7pm
Tickets: £6/£4
All event profits to charity
You're possibly familiar with the idea of Movember: men growing moustaches to raise awareness of - and much needed funding to tackle - men's mental and physical health issues. To support these vital causes, we decided that the pen is more eloquent than the razor, or even the lack of razor.
So we have invited a cross-section of male poets - young and mature, straight and gay, from a spectrum of ethnic and national backgrounds - to raise their own voices and each offer one poem that speaks about being male in our current times.
NB: All proceeds from the event will be donated to Movember to support its charitable ventures, and the poets have all given their services free of charge; if you are to donate more than the ticket price, that would be very welcome.
And indeed everyone - male or otherwise - is welcome to listen. Come as you are: there is absolutely no requirement for anyone to adjust their facial hair :-)
Meet the Poets
Each of our poets will read one poem, on an aspect of the contemporary male experience of their own choosing. On the night, they will read in ascending order of age, giving the audience the opportunity to observe the nuances in experience that ageing can bring.
Aaron Kent is a working-class writer, stroke survivor, and insomniac from Cornwall. His second poetry collection, The Working Classic, is available from the87press, and his debut, Angels the Size of Houses, is available from Shearsman. He has read his poetry for the BBC, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Stroke Association, had work published in various journals, and is an Arvon tutor. His poetry has been translated into languages including French, Hungarian, German, Cymraeg, and Kernewek.
More about Aaron:
%20(1).jpeg)
photo (c) Hayley Madden
photo (c) Louis Catliff
Eric Yip is a poet from Hong Kong. He won the 2021 National Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets, The Guardian, Oxford Poetry, and The Poetry Review. His debut pamphlet is Exposure (ignitionpress, 2024).
More about Eric:
Caleb Parkin, Bristol City Poet 2020 - 22, has poems in The Guardian, The Rialto, The Poetry Review and was guest poet on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. He has three pamphlets: his debut collection, This Fruiting Body (Nine Arches) was longlisted for the Laurel Prize and second collection, Mingle, is due October 2024. He tutors widely, holds an MSc Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes and is a practice-based PhD researcher at University of Exeter.
More about Caleb:
Gregory Woods is the author of six poetry collections from Carcanet Press, the latest being Records of an Incitement to Silence (2021); and of They Exchange Glances: Gay Modernist Poems in Translation (Hercules Press, 2024). His cultural histories include Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry (1987), A History of Gay Literature (1998) and Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World (2016), all from Yale University Press. He is Emeritus Professor of Gay & Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University.
More about Gregory :
James McDermott's poetry collections include Wild Life (Nine Arches Press; shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards 2023), Manatomy (Burning Eye Books; longlisted for Polari's First Book Prize 2021) and Erased (Polari Press). James's plays include Jab and Time & Tide (both nominated for Off West End Theatre Awards) and Rubber Ring. One of the writers on EastEnders, he is an Arvon writing tutor and lecturer in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.
More about James:
Keith Jarrett is a UK and International Poetry Slam Champion, selected for the International Literary Showcase by Val McDermid as one of 10 most outstanding LGBT writers in the UK. His writing has appeared widely in anthologies and magazines, and his monologue, Safest Spot in Town, was commissioned by BBC Four as part of the Queers series. His book of poetry, Selah, was published with Burning Eye.
More about Keith:
photo (c) Naomi Woodis
Leo Boix is a bilingual Latinx poet born in Argentina who lives in the UK. His debut collection, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant, was published by Chatto & Windus in 2021 and was the PBS Wild Card Choice. Boix has received several awards, including the Bart Wolffe Poetry Award, the Keats-Shelley Prize, a PEN Award, and The Society of Authors’ Foundation and K. Blundell Trust. Boix’s second collection, Southernmost: Sonnets, is forthcoming with Chatto & Windus (Vintage) in June 2025.
More about Leo:
Lewis Buxton was born in 1993. His work has appeared in The Poetry Review, The Rialto and The Independent, and won the Winchester Poetry Prize. His first collection, Boy in Various Poses (Nine Arches Press) was published in 2021, and his next book, Mate Arias, is forthcoming from The Emma Press.
More about Lewis:
Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist who lives in Birmingham and lectures at the university. His seventh book of poems, Notes on the Sonnets, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2021.
More about Luke:
Mark Fiddes was born just up the A508 from Milton Keynes, but now lives and writes in the Middle East and Spain. His latest collection is Other Saints Are Available (Live Canon), following on the success of The Rainbow Factory and The Chelsea Flower Show Massacre (both Templar Poetry). A prizewinner in the National Poetry Competition, the Bridport Prize and many others, he recently received the Tahbib Festival Award by Bollywood legend and poet Javed Akhtar.
More about Mark:
.jpg)
%20Dave%20Guttridge.jpg)
photo (c) Dave Gutteridge
.jpg)
photo (c) Naomi Woddis
_JPG.jpg)
photo (c) Sofia Hericson
Mark Ward is from Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2023) and five pamphlets, the most recent of which is I Was a Teenage Exorcist (Chaps Poetry, 2024). A new pamphlet of ekphrastic poems in response to dead queer male painters’ work called Masters is forthcoming from The Emma Press in October 2025. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its eighth year.
More about Mark:
Martin Figura’s collection, The Remaining Men, was published in March. The book and show Whistle were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show, an award his second show Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine was shortlisted for. He lives in Norwich with Helen Ivory and sciatica. In 2021 he was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence; with a pamphlet, My Name is Mercy, from Fair Acre Press.
More about Martin:
Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade and lives between Extremadura and West Sussex. His second full collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don't (Happenstance), was a Poetry Society Book of the Year 2023.
More about Matthew:
Paul Stephenson has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015); Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016); and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). From 2018 to 2022, he co-curated Poetry in Aldeburgh, for which he is a trustee. His first collection, Hard Drive, was published by Carcanet in June 2023 and was a finalist in the Gay Poetry category of the Lambda Literary Award and is longlisted for the Polari Book Prize.
More about Paul:
Peter Daniels is the author of four poetry collections - most recently Old Men (Salt) - and several pamphlets, including two Poetry Business prizewinners. He has won several competitions including the Arvon, TLS and Ledbury, and his translations of Vladislav Khodasevich from Russian (Angel Classics, 2013) were shortlisted for three awards including the Oxford-Weidenfeld prize. Formerly queer writer in residence at the London Metropolitan Archives, he has a Creative Writing PhD from Goldsmiths, London.
More about Peter:
A poem from Rishi Dastidar’s Laurel Prize long-listed third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press), was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). He also reviews poetry for the Guardian (UK) and is chair of Wasafiri.
More about Rishi:
Robert Hamberger has been shortlisted and highly commended for the Forward Prizes. He won The London Magazine Poetry Prize, 2023, and his work has appeared in British, American, Irish and Japanese anthologies. His fourth collection, Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press), was shortlisted for the 2020 Polari Prize. His prose memoir with poems, A Length of Road: Finding myself in the footsteps of John Clare, was published by John Murray in 2021.
More about Robert:
Rory Waterman’s collections, all published by Carcanet, are: Tonight the Summer’s Over (2013; PBS Recommendation, shortlisted for a Seamus Heaney Award); Sarajevo Roses (2017; shortlisted for Ledbury Forte Prize); Sweet Nothings (2020); and, most recently, Come Here to This Gate (2024), described in the Guardian as 'a wise and deeply satisfying book'. He is on the English and Creative Writing faculty at NTU, and co-edits New Walk Editions.
More about Rory:
Roy McFarlane is a poet, playwright and former Youth & Community worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage. National Canal Laureate and former Birmingham Poet Laureate, he performed in the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony 2022 as one of the Bards of Brum. His debut collection, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was followed by The Healing Next Time, shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. His third collection, Living by Troubled Waters, was published in 2022.
More about Roy:
Simon Maddrell's poems have appeared in numerous publications including Acumen, AMBIT, Butcher’s Dog, Magma,Poetry Wales, Propel, Stand, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Moth, The Rialto, and Under the Radar. In 2020, Queerfella jointly-won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition. Isle of Sin (Polari Press, 2023),The Whole Island (Valley Press, 2023) and a finger in derek jarman's mouth (Polari Press, 2024) were all Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Selections.
More about Simon: