Date: Sunday 21st April
Venue: Watershed (W3)
Time: 19:30 - 21:00
Tickets: £5

Live Streamed ✔

The closing event of Lyra 2024 celebrates poets from all over Bristol sharing their perspectives, in collaboration with Bristol Ideas as part of their closing activity. With an introduction from Andrew Kelly.

Come along to celebrate Bristol’s wide range of stories and perspectives as we welcome an array of poets from all over the city, as well as community groups who have been commissioned to create new work. This 90 minute showcase of quick-fire readings will also include a feature set from Lyra’s 2024 Festival Poet Shakara. Hear from current City Poet Kat Lyons, former City Poets Caleb Parkin and Miles Chambers, our Young City Poets Altoma and Nara, newly commissioned poems about Bristol from Stephen Lightbown, Asmaa Jama, Deborah Harvey, Lawrence Hoo and Sukina Noor, plus showcases from community groups Word by Word, Bristol After Stroke, Our Future (Polish & Somali women) and the Bonds Poetry exhibition project.

The event will be followed by festival afterparty drinks in the Watershed Café & Bar from 21:00pm.

The event is also available to watch via live stream. Please book a ‘Live Stream Ticket’ at checkout.

Presented in partnership with Bristol Ideas.

Kat Lyons (they/them) is a Queer Bristol-based writer, performer, w0rkshop facilitator and creative producer whose work is grounded in everyday politics and a love of storytelling. Kat is the current Bristol City Poet (2022-2024), and recently finished touring their debut solo show Dry Season, a spoken word theatre show exploring gender, age and menopause. Their debut poetry collection Love Beneath the Nails is available from Verve Poetry Press. Kat performs throughout the UK and was nominated for the 2022 Jerwood Poetry in Performance Award. They host poetry events, facilitate w0rkshops for all ages, write for commission and are interested in exploring how stories re/connect us to our world and to each other, and in artistic/interdisciplinary collaborations of all kinds.

Deborah Harvey lives in Bristol. She is co-director of The Leaping Word, a poetry consultancy providing creative and editorial advice for writers, and qualified counselling support for artists exploring the personal in their work. Her poems have been widely published and broadcast on Radio 4’s Poetry Please. Her sixth poetry collection, Love the Albatross, which addresses the subject of estrangement, will be published by Indigo Dreams in autumn 2024.

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 his second collection, Mingle, is due October 2024. He tutors for Arvon, Poetry Society, Poetry School and elsewhere. He holds an MSc Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes and is a practice-as-research PhD candidate at University of Exeter.

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Entry requirements: no age restrictions — Read more — Read less