Soho Poly Poetry

In the sixth event of the 25/26 Soho Poly Poetry series, we’re excited to welcome a stellar trio of poets:

Joe Carrick-Varty is a British-Irish poet and the author of two books: Before Violence (Carcanet, 2026), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and More Sky (Carcanet, 2023), which won an Eric Gregory Award, was shortlisted for the T S. Eliot Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, and was named a Poetry Book of the Year by the Irish Times. His pamphlet, Somewhere Far (The Poetry Business, 2019), won the New Poets Prize. In 2023, he was named the Anthony Burgess Fellow In Creative Writing at the University of Manchester. He founded and edited bath magg from 2019 until its closure in 2023. His work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, including Granta, New Statesman, POETRY, The Poetry Review, The Forward Book of Poetry, The London Magazine, PN Review, and Poetry London.

Natalie Linh Bolderston is a Vietnamese-Chinese-British poet from Stoke-on-Trent. She has won an Eric Gregory Award and the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her debut collection, Divinations on Survival, is just out with Pavilion Poetry. She is an alumna of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, the London Library Emerging Writers’ Programme, and Writing West Midlands’ Room 204 programme. Her pamphlet, The Protection of Ghosts, was published by V. Press in 2019.

Ruth Padel has written novels, non-fiction and thirteen poetry collections, most recently Girl, exploring the way a girl can figure as the human soul and creative energy, yet her persona has been shaped by male fantasy. ‘Searching, restless poems, formally inventive with a dazzling control of the lyric line…just extraordinary.’ Kim Moore’

Her lucid poems traverse a spiritual quest through ancient mythology, mysticism, European fairytale, searching for “where a girl / can find clarity on who she is”’. (Guardian)Other books include much-loved work on reading contemporary poetry and a novel on the holocaust in Crete. She is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Zoological Society of London, Professor of Poetry Emerita at King’s College London, and currently finishing a non-fiction book on elephants. www.ruthpadel.com.

Books and pamphlets will be available to purchase on the night.

Drinks and refreshments will also be available.

Please note that free student and lower income tickets are available and we aim to make each night affordable and accessible to all. Please contact Hannah Copley on social media or on h.copley@westminster.ac.uk to join the guestlist.