Acclaimed poets Patience Agbabi, Jason Allen-Paisant and Sharena Lee Satti perform their work and talk about their craft.

What makes a great poem? How important is performance? What inspires poets to create their work? Enjoy performances from three celebrated poets and find out more about what inspires their work.

Followed by an Open Mic with Talking Zebras at 5.30pm.

Patience Agbabi is one of the UK’s foremost writers, and a sparkling performer, who has spent over 20 years celebrating the written and spoken word. Her work has appeared in anthologies, on TV and radio, The London Underground and human skin. In 2004 she was nominated one of the UK’s ‘Next Generation Poets’. Patience is the author of five books, including her ground-breaking debut poetry collection R.A.W. and Telling Tales, a vivid retelling of The Canterbury Tales, plus Middle Grade novels The Infinite and The Time-Thief. Her high-profile multimedia projects include Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 at the National Gallery and she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2017.

Jason Allen-Paisant is from Jamaica and now lives in Leeds. His widely acclaimed literary debut Thinking with Trees (2021) was shortlisted for the prestigious OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. His second book Thinking with Spirits: Engaging with Art and the Political Aimé Césaire, will be published in 2023. Jason is a lecturer in Caribbean Poetry & Decolonial Thought and Director of the Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Leeds. He holds a doctorate in Mediaeval and Modern Languages from the University of Oxford, and he speaks seven languages.

Sharena Lee Satti is a Bradford-based spoken word artist, poet, event host, poetry workshop facilitator and educator. Her book SHE was published in 2020 (The Verve Poetry Press) and her new collection will be out in 2023. Sharena’s poetry draws on her own life experiences, struggles, cultural identity and upbringing, often addressing challenging themes. She was nominated as a ‘Positive Role Model’ at the National Diversity Awards and hosts her own monthly radio poetry show, Spoke.