Date: Sunday 26th April 2026

Venue: Watershed (W3)

Time: 18:00 - 19:30

Tickets: £5 / £3 / FREE

✅ Live Streamed (book a ‘Live Stream Ticket’ at checkout)

✅ All Lyra Fest venues are wheelchair accessible. Access Information Pack available at www.lyrafest.com.

Roots, Resonance and African Heritage

Presented in partnership with Ujima Radio, and in association with Poetry Africa

For Lyra Festival’s closing event, join Ujima Radio for a dynamic evening showcase of established, emerging, national and local poets and spoken word artists of African Heritage. 

With headline performances from Theresa Lola (Ceremony for the Nameless) and Joladé Olusanya (Jabez Incarnate) whose latest books both explore culture, memory and history through a Nigerian-British lens. These striking and lyrical texts reflect on belonging, ancestry, and tradition across places and generations, asking how these shape names, expectations and diasporic experiences. 

The event will feature support readings from Bristol-based poets, and a virtual reading in partnership with Poetry Africa in Durban. Hosted by Corrd The Seeker. 

Ujima Radio:

Ujima Radio is the leading Arts and Media social enterprise that primarily serves Afrikan Heritage communities in Bristol and the South West.

Theresa Lola:

Theresa Lola is an award-winning poet and artist. She has performed at the ICA, Royal Albert Hall, and Jazz Cafe. Her second poetry collection Ceremony for the Nameless was awarded the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize. The book uses names as a philosophy to explore memory, collectiveness, growth, and the constructed self. A poem from her first collection In Search of Equilibrium is studied in the UK’s GCSE syllabus. The collection explores memory, grief, and resilience. She has been commissioned to write for The National Gallery, Selfridges, Nest New York, and Rimowa. Theresa is also the founder of Your Envoi, a lifestyle brand that uses poetry inspired principles to create tools for mindful living. She infuses creativity into the wellness tools, designing them to deepen human connection and bring enlightening discoveries. 

Joladé Olusanya:

Joladé Olusanya is a British–Nigerian poet, filmmaker and photographer based in London. His debut pamphlet Jabez Incarnate, published by Out-Spoken Press, traces faith, family, migration and inheritance through an intimate, narrative-driven lens that runs throughout his work on the page and on screen. He was a finalist in the inaugural Young Poet Laureate for London programme, a winner of the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry, , their Performance Poetry Prize and the Poetry London Prize (3rd Place). His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review and numerous anthologies, and he has been commissioned by organisations including the Roundhouse, BBC 1Xtra, Barbican, Transport for London and BET. He has performed globally and toured with the likes of US poets Jasmine Mans and Rudy Francisco. In recognition of his contribution to contemporary British poetry, he was invited to Buckingham Palace for a reception with the late Queen Elizabeth II. He is an alumni of the Barbican Young Poets, Obsidian Foundation and Malika's Kitchen.

Beyond the page, Joladé is the founder of By The Kin, a production studio and creative home for films, visual projects and community-centred work. His photography practice spans portraiture, music and street culture, informed by the same attention to intimacy, atmosphere and everyday beauty that shapes his poems. He regularly facilitates work-shops with young people and emerging artists, using poetry and storytelling as tools for reflection, dialogue and possibility.

Part of Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival 2026

#LyraFest

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Entry requirements: 16+, any under 18s accompanied by 21+ adult 1:1 ratio — Read more — Read less