The 2017 Kendal Poetry Festival
Dream Team
We will be announcing details of workshops, talks, open mics and a more detailed programme very soon, but for now, please enjoy reading about our 2017 Kendal Poetry Festival Poets.
FRIDAY 16TH JUNE
Jack Mapanje
Originally from Malawi, Jack Mapanje lives in exile in New York after he was arrested and imprisoned for publishing his first book of poems. His most recent book is Greetings from Grandpa (Bloodaxe 2016).
Hannah Lowe
Hannah Lowe’s first poetry collection Chick (Bloodaxe 2013) won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection. In September 2014, she was named as one of 20 Next Generation poets. Hannah will be reading from her latest collection Chan.
Martin Kratz
Martin Kratz publications include a book of experimental writing Mount London by Penned in the Margins (co-editor), as well as a wide range of poetry. He regularly collaborates with the composer Leo Geyer and together they have written several successful opera projects.
William Letford
William Letford’s debut collection Bevel was published by Carcanet in 2012. He has taken part in translation projects through Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine, and in 2014 a chapbook of his poetry Potom Koža Toho Druhého was translated in Slovakian and published by Vertigo. William will be reading from his latest collection Dirt.
SATURDAY 17TH JUNE
Kathryn Maris
Kathryn Maris is originally from New York and has lived in London since 1999. Her two collections are The Book of Jobs (Four Way Books, 2006) and God Loves You (Seren, 2013). Her third collection, The House with Only an Attic and a Basement, will be published by Penguin UK in 2018.
Chrissy Williams
Chrissy Williams is a poet, editor and tutor living in London. Her first book-length collection Bear is published by Bloodaxe in May 2017. She currently works as a comics editor on the New York Times bestselling series The Wicked + The Divine.
Inua Ellams
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer. He facilitates workshops in creative writing where he explores reoccurring themes in his work of identity, displacement and destiny. He will be reading from his latst collection #Afterhours published by Nine Arches Press.
Katrina Naomi
Katrina Naomi’s poetry has appeared in The TLS, The Spectator and The Poetry Review, and has been broadcast on Radio 4. Her second collection, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me, was published by Seren (2016), and praised by Vicki Feaver for its ‘cool voice and fierce eye’.
Malika Booker
Malika Booker is a British writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage. Her collection Pepper Seed came out with Peepal Tree Press in 2013 and longlisted for the OCM Bocas 2014 prize. Her 2017 publication is The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body, where she will be published with the poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire.
Tim Liardet
Twice shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, for The World Before Snow (Carcanet) in 2015 and The Blood Choir (Seren) in 2006, Tim Liardet has produced ten collections of poetry to date. He is currently a Poetry Book Society selector and Professor of Poetry at Bath Spa University, England.
SUNDAY 18TH JUNE
Linda Gregerson
Linda Gregerson is the author of six collections of poetry and two volumes of criticism. Gregerson’s essays on lyric poetry and Renaissance literature appear in leading journals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. Her most recent, Prodigal: New and Selected Poems, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2015.
Ian Duhig
Ian Duhig has written seven books of poetry. A former homelessness worker, Duhig still works with socially excluded groups though now on writing projects and is currently developing a piece for Refugee Tales. His latest collection The Blind Roadmaker (Picador 2016) was shortlisted for the Roehampton, Forward Best Collection and TS Eliot Prizes
Very excited to read the line up of poets. I am thrilled I will be able to attend the Kendal Poetry Festival in 2018.