Literature: Poets & Players
- Sat 29 Nov 2025
- 2:30 pm
- Free
Please join Poets & Players on Saturday 29 November September 2025, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.
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.
Fiona Benson is the author of four poetry collections: Bright Travellers, Vertigo & Ghost, Ephemeron and Midden Witch, and one poetry script Infamous Offspring in collaboration with the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. Between them, her books have won numerous accolades including the Forward Prize and the Seamus Heaney Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Cholmondeley Award recipient. She has edited two books of Ukrainian poetry in translation – We Were Here by Artur Dron, translated by Yuliya Musakovska, and Dasein by Yaryna Chornohuz, translated by Amelia Glaser. She lives in mid-Devon, UK with her husband and their two daughters.
Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist and a professor at the University of Birmingham. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005 and his first collection of prose poems The Solex Brothers was published later that year. He has published six further collections, including The Harbour Beyond the Movie; Cain; Notes on the Sonnets (which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2021); and The Book of Jonah which was published by Picador in 2025. He is also the author of three novels, and his latest, Black Bag, will be published by Hachette in 2026.
Nóra Blascsók is a Hungarian poet based in Manchester. She is a current Manchester Multilingual City Poet commissioned by Manchester City of Literature for 2025 and also part of the New Northern Poets 2025 cohort, a scheme run by the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. Her debut pamphlet <body>of work</body> was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2022. Her most recent poems can be found in Propel, Under The Radar and The Poetry Review.
Adam Fairhall plays jazz and free music on the piano, harmonium, accordion and organ. He has released five albums as leader or co-leader on the SLAM, Bruce’s Fingers and EfPi labels, to widespread critical acclaim (including an Album of the Year accolade by influential website Bird is the Worm for his 2012 album The Imaginary Delta). He receives frequent BBC Radio airplay, and a programme dedicated to his work was broadcast on Concertzender (Dutch radio) in 2014. He has been interviewed for The Wire and Jazzwise.
“A hugely accomplished instrumentalist” – The Wire
“Adam Fairhall is a total star” – Independent on Sunday