POETRY NIGHT
Doors 6pm, 6.15pm start.
In the second of the 2025 series of poetry events at the Soho Poly, join us for an evening of electrifying readings and performance from Laynie Browne, Ella Frears, Azad Ashim Sharma, and Karen McCarthy Woolf.
Laynie Browne is the author of seventeen collections of poems, three novels, and a book of short fiction. Her recent books of poetry include: Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books). Her work has appeared in journals such as Conjunctions, A Public Space, New American Writing, The Brooklyn Rail, and in anthologies including: The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press), The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, UK), and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (W.W. Norton). Her writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches Creative Writing, and coordinates the MOOC Modern Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ella Frears is poet based in London. Her debut collection Shine, Darling was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Her latest book Goodlord, which takes the form of one long email to an estate agent, was shortlisted for The Forward Prize and a Sky Arts Award. She has held residencies and fellowships for the Tate Gallery, the National Trust, Royal Holloway University physics department, John Hansard Gallery, the Dartington Trust, 16 motorway service stations, the number 17 bus in Southampton, and Exeter University’s environmental history department. Ella is the current RLF Fellow at the Courtauld and hosts Tears for Frears on Soho Radio.
Azad Ashim Sharma is the director of the87press and serves as poetry editor at Philosophy and Global Affairs and the CLR James Journal. He is a PhD Candidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Boiled Owls (Nightboat Books, 2024). His second collection Ergastulum: Vignettes of Lost Time (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) was the recipient of the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Book Award. He lives in South London.
Karen McCarthy Woolf, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 for Top Doll (Dialogue Books), was born in London to English and Jamaican parents. She is the author of three poetry books and the editor of numerous literary anthologies. As a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at UCLA, she was writer in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Her debut An Aviary of Small Birds (Carcanet Press, 2014), was an Observer Book of the Year and her second collection, Seasonal Disturbances (Carcanet Press, 2017), was a winner in the Laurel Prize. McCarthy Woolf has performed her work worldwide – in the US, Caribbean, Asia and across Europe at venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican and Kings Place for Poetica Electronica, which showcased music collaborations with various dance and techno producers. Her poems have been translated into Turkish, Swedish, Spanish, Polish and Dutch, produced as an animated and choreographed short film, exhibited by Poems on the Underground and dropped from a helicopter over the Houses of Parliament. She was awarded a 2024 Jerwood Poetry Award by the Royal Society of Literature.
Books and pamphlets will be available to purchase on the night.
Drinks and refreshments will also be available.
Free student and lower income tickets are available. Please contact Hannah Copley h.copley@westminster.ac.uk.
About the series
Soho Poly Poetry is a new monthly event series held in the heart of London. Drawing on the Soho Poly’s history of radical and disruptive theatre and music, the events bring together poets and performers for collaborative, innovative and genre-bending work, as well as celebrating new and up-and-coming voices alongside more established writers. For more information about future events, and to sign up to our mailing list, please contact Hannah Copley h.copley@westminster.ac.uk.