Please join Poets & Players on Saturday 31 October 2026, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musiciansL Daljit Nagra, Suzanne Batty, Elizabeth Gibson & Music from Joshua Cavanagh-Brierley & Richard Jones

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.

Daljit Nagra is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, Fellow of Society of Authors, a PBS New Generation Poet, presenter of the weekly Poetry Extra on Radio 4 Extra, Daljit Nagra, MBE, has published four poetry collections, all with Faber & Faber, which have won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award, and been shortlisted for the Costa Prize and twice for the TS Eliot Prize. His collection indiom was a PBS Choice and his latest collection Yiewsley was an Observer Poetry Book of the Month.

Suzanne Batty has published two poetry collections The Barking Thing and States of Happiness with Bloodaxe Books. Her lifelong passion for theatre and performance informs her latest collection Do Not Feed the Ghosts which was published by Bloodaxe in June 2027. She is currently working on a hybrid poetry/drama project Syd, which was longlisted for Women in Theatre Lab 2024. Suzanne won a Northern Writers Award for Poetry in 2022 and the Poetry Society’s Anne Born Prize. She collaborates with other creatives including musicians, visual artists, photographers, and ceramicists.

Elizabeth Gibson is a poet, zine-maker, and facilitator from Wigan, based in Manchester. Elizabeth won the New North Poets’ Prize at the 2017 Northern Writers’ Awards and was awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England in 2021. Poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Dust Poetry, fourteen poems, The Interpreter’s House, Lighthouse, Magma, The North, and Under the Radar, as well as being anthologised, by Pan Macmillan in He, She, They, Us – Queer Poems and You’re Never Too Much – Poems for Every Emotion. Elizabeth has been commissioned by Manchester Literature Festival, Manchester Museum, Manchester Poetry Library, Manchester Pride, The Portico Library, and Islington Mill. Elizabeth’s debut poetry collection is A love the weight of an animal (Confingo, 2025).

Joshua Cavanagh-Brierley is a Manchester-based bassist and composer. Growing up in a creative household with his musician father and artist mother resulted in him playing music and discovering a joy and passion for creating from an early age. Hugely versatile, Joshua leads and co-leads a number of omni-genre ensembles of varying sizes and forces, including innovative piano trio Angle Shades alongside pianist Richard Jones and drummer Johnny Hunter, and is an in-demand sideman who has played, toured, and/or recorded with Nishla Smith Quintet, Caoilifhionn Rose, and Janileigh Cohen among many others.