Poetry Cafe

A celebration of the joy of words. Featuring the Brighton-based poet Roy McFarlane, British Indian poet Sharan Hunjan and Newcastle-based poet Jo Clement, join us for an evening of poetry, music and laughter as we celebrate our cultures and communities.

Roy McFarlane was born in Birmingham to Jamaican parents and now lives in Brighton. He has held the roles of Birmingham’s Poet Laureate, Starbucks’ Poet in Residence and Canal Laureate. His debut poetry collection, Beginning With Your Last Breath (2016) was followed by The Healing Next Time (2018), which was nominated for the Ted Hughes Award and Jhalak Prize. He is the editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets From The Midlands (2011).

Sharan Hunjan is a British Indian poet and teacher who grew up in Southall, London. She describes herself as being “interested in the poetics of language, post-colonialism and race”. She is a member of the radical writing collective 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE, who published a book of poetry and a zine together. She has been published in the poetry anthology Slam! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This (2020). Her debut collection, Open Mouths, is published in March 2024.

Jo Clement is the Managing Editor of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine in Newcastle. Her first book-length collection, Outlandish (Bloodaxe Books), was longlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the John Pollard International Poetry Prize.

Anthony Anaxagorou FRSL is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist and publisher. His third collection, Heritage Aesthetics published with Granta Poetry in 2022, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award. It was listed as one of New Statesman’s top books of 2022.
His second collection, After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken and he is the editor-in-chief of Propel Magazine. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton.