Poetry Reading Group

Our poetry reading group is back for a new season, featuring contemporary classics! We’ve a wide range of poetry to jump into; from the political, to heartache and loneliness, the poets I’ve chosen get to the nub of what it means to be human, in all its painful glory.

To round out the year, we will be looking at one of 2025’s hotly anticipated debuts: Safa Khatib’s Dress of Locusts.

This is An electrifying collection exploring language and revolution, by an extraordinary new poetic talent. Woven from threads of Aramaic, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Sumerian and Arabic, A Dress of Locusts is an unforgettable song cycle in which the living and dead sing back and forth to one another. Here, Safa Khatib participates in a poetic tradition Jerome Rothenberg once called the "Revolution of the Word', journeying across the possibilities of language in search of its capacity to render self and world refreshingly anew.

'Essential reading' - Poetry Book Society Review

'Safa Khatib's poems open my eyes, sharpen my ears' - Safia Elhillo

'With a meditative clarity, Khatib calls us to account for the ways we have - and continue to - turn eyes away from the historic now' - Niki Herd