Please join Poets & Players on Saturday 6 September 2025, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians. Our headline poet is Lorna Goodison on a rare visit from Canada. Also poets Charlotte Eichler, Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal and Jack Faricy were invited to respond to a commission on the theme ‘Close to the Edge’ and will be reading their new work at the event. We will also be joined by pianist Simeon Walker.

The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Performers often bring along books and CDs to sell, please note we are only able to accept cash payments.

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Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison was born in Jamaica, and has won numerous awards for her writing in both poetry and prose, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Gold Medal from Jamaica, the Henry Russel Award for Exceptional Creative Work from the University of Michigan, and one of Canada’s largest literary prizes, the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People (2007).

Her work has been included in the major anthologies and collections of contemporary poetry over the past twenty-five years, such as the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the HarperCollins World Reader, the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, and Longman Masters of British Literature.

Along with her award winning memoir, she has published three collections of short stories (including By Love Possessed, 2011) and nine collections of poetry. Her work has been translated into many languages, and she has been a central figure at literary festivals throughout the world. Lorna Goodison teaches at the University of Michigan, where she is the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. Lorna Goodison was appointed PoetLaureate of Jamaica on 17 May 2017 and will serve until 2020.

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Charlotte Eichler

Charlotte Eichler is a poet based in West Yorkshire. She is the author of Swimming Between Islands, which was published by Carcanet in 2023 and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize in 2024.

Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including New Poetries VIII, PN Review and The Manchester Review. She is currently poet-in-residence for the AHRC-funded project ‘Ragna’s Islands’ and is working on new poetry inspired by the Saga of the Earls of Orkney and the islands of Fair Isle, Papay and North Ronaldsay.

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Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal

Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal is a writer and literary translator, currently based in Manchester, where she is working towards a practice-based PhD at MMU’s Centre for Place Writing. Her doctoral research explores reservoirs as engineered ecologies shaped by memories of displacement, control, and transformation.

Her poems have been translated into Arabic, German, Italian; and have appeared in Ambit, Bad Lilies, Banshee, bath magg, Cyphers, Gutter, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Jukebox, Poetry London, Prototype, Rattle, The Irish Times, and elsewhere. Her criticism has appeared in Brixton Review of Books, Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics and Wasafiri. In 2018, she was selected for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series.

She was the 2021 Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent. She was awarded the fellowship to develop a series of poems tethered to the life and work of Norah Richards, an Irish theatre practitioner who called the erstwhile Punjab and the Dhauladhars her home.

Supriya’s most recent book, The Yak Dilemma, is published by Makina Press. A limited-edition pamphlet of plague poems, Bitter Almonds, is currently in production with Salvage Press and will be released later this summer.

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Jack Faricy

Jack Faricy is a teacher and poet based in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire. He regularly attends workshops with Huddersfield’s Albert Poets. His poems have won prizes and appeared in magazines. Jack’s debut collection Traces is published by Calder Valley Poetry. He is currently working on a PhD project, which is a poetic exploration of the M62 and the landscapes it connects.

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Simeon Walker

Versatile and prolific Leeds-based pianist & composer Simeon Walker has quickly emerged as a leading light in the burgeoning Modern Classical scene. Regularly performing and touring across the UK and Europe, he has appeared at Latitude & Timber festivals; supported Submotion Orchestra, Neil Cowley and Simon Armitage’s musical project LYR; and received over 50 million streams/listens across platforms, with his music frequently broadcast and featured across a range of BBC Radio output & Classic FM.

An in-demand collaborator, speaker, educator and arranger, he also works as a session musician in various recording and live contexts across multiple musical styles and genres. He founded and continues to curate Brudenell Piano Sessions – an established, captivating and eclectic live music series highlighting the diverse music being composed and performed on the piano, hosted at one of the UK’s most iconic grassroots music venues, Brudenell Social Club.

Listeners are invited to find stillness, beauty and meaning as much in the spaces between the notes as the notes themselves, as engaging and accessible musical stories are woven with each tender, intimate performance.