Date: Sunday 26th April 2026

Venue: Watershed (W3)

Time: 15:30 - 17:00

Tickets: £5 / £3 / FREE

Booking Link: TBA

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

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

Wonder and Wanderers: A Poetic Journey

What makes us pause in wonder? And what sends us wandering through the world, memories and imagination? Join five incredible poets from around the UK, Rishi Dastidar (Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak), Romalyn Ante (AGIMAT), Katrina Naomi (dance as if), Chris Emery (Wonder) and Natalie Linh Bolderston (Divinations on Survival), whose most recent poetry books are alive with curiosity, movement and discovery. Responding to Lyra's 2026 theme Wander and Wanderers, these poems travel across streets, coastlines and continents, through family histories, myth and memory, and ask how we journey through the world and see it anew.

Artist Bios:

Rishi Dastidar:

Rishi Dastidar’s fourth collection of poetry is Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak (Nine Arches Press, 2026). His third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press, 2023), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize, and a poem from it was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is chair of Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing, a trustee of the Wordsworth Trust, and a regular poetry reviewer for The Guardian (UK).

Romalyn Ante:

Romalyn Ante FRSL is an award-winning Filipino-born British poet, novelist, and editor. She is based in the Midlands and currently sits on the editorial board for Poetry London.​​ Her poetry collections are AGIMAT and Antiemetic for Homesickness( Chatto Poetry). Her debut novel, The Left-Behind Child, will come out in August with Chatto Books/Penguin.

Katrina Naomi:

Katrina’s fourth poetry collection, 'Battery Rocks', (Seren, 2024) won the Arthur Welton Award, the Holyer an Gof Award for Poetry, and was recommended in The Guardian. She's a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize. Her poetry has appeared on Poems on the Underground and BBC Radio 4. She recently published 'dance as if' with Verve. Katrina performs her poetry internationally.

Chris Emery:

Born in Manchester in 1963, Chris Emery has published five poetry collections, including his latest, Wonder. Alongside his own writing, he has edited selections of Emily Brontë, John Keats, and Christina Rossetti. Now living in Cromer, North Norfolk, he is a director of the independent press, Salt.

Natalie Linh Bolderston:

Natalie Linh Bolderston is a Vietnamese-Chinese-British poet from Stoke-on-Trent. She has won an Eric Gregory Award and the Rebecca Swift Women Poets' Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is an alumna of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, the London Library Emerging Writers' Programme, and Writing West Midlands' Room 204 programme. Her debut full-length collection, Divinations on Survival, is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press.

Part of Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival 2026

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