Digital Workshop Series - All 8 Sessions

Following the 2023 Festival and DPF Poetry Prize, Derby Poetry Festival is excited to launch our 2024 workshop series, bringing together poetry and creative writing talent from across the country.

This year's workshop series is all digital and integrates different types of writing, exploring form, world play and prompts, ideal for established writers and those looking to develop their creative practice.

These two-hour workshops will run monthly alternating between Thursday Evenings and Saturday Mornings, starting on Thursday 22nd February.

Each workshop is £20, book all 8 sessions here for £120. 

Thursday 22nd February 2024, 6:30pm - 8:30pm with Anthony Anaxagorou

Saturday 23rd March 2024, 10:00am - 12:00pm with Cecilia Knapp

Thursday 25th April 2024, 6:30pm - 8:30pm with Andrew McMillan

Saturday 25th May 2023, 10:00am - 12:00pm with Rachel Long

Thursday 20th June 2024, 6:30pm - 8:30pm with Liz Berry

Saturday 20th July 2024, 10:00am - 12:00pm with Yomi Sode

Thursday 22nd August 2024, 6:30pm - 8:30pm with Vanessa Kisuule

Saturday 21st September 2024, 10:00am - 12:00pm with Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa

Guest information:

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.

In 2020 he published How To Write It with Merky Books; a practical guide fused with tips and memoirs looking at the politics of writing as well as the craft of poetry and fiction along with the wider publishing industry.

Anthony is the artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. He is the editor-in-chief of Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection.

In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton. In 2023 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Cecilia Knapp is a poet and novelist and the Young People’s Laureate for London 2020/2021. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward prize for best single poem. She is the winner of the 2021 Ruth Rendell award and has been shortlisted for both the Rebecca Swift Women’s prize and the Outspoken poetry prize. Her debut poetry collection Peach Pig was published by Corsair in 2022 and was the Observer’s poetry book of the month for October. Her poems have appeared in  The Financial Times, Granta, The White Review, Wasafiri, Popshot, Ambit, Magma and bath magg and anthologised. She curated the anthology Everything is Going to be alright: Poems for When you Really Need Them, published by Trapeze in 2021.  Her debut novel Little Boxes is published by The Borough Press (Harper Collins.) Purchase here. In 2023, Little Boxes was longlisted for The Authors Club Best First Novel Award.

Andrew McMillan was born in Barnsley in 1988. His debut collection of poetry, physical, was the only poetry book to ever win the Guardian First Book Award; it was also awarded a Somerset Maugham award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and in 2019 was voted as one of the Top 25 Poetry Books of the Past 25 Years by the Booksellers Association. His second collection, playtime, won the inaugural Polari Prize. A third collection, pandemonium, was published in 2021 and in 2022 he co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems, which was shortlisted in the British Book Awards. He is professor of contemporary writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His debut novel, Pity, is out now. Photo credited to Sophie Davidson.

Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions (Picador 2020 / Tin House 2021) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The US edition of My Darling from the Lions was a New York Times Book Review, and named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME.

Liz Berry is an award-winning poet and author of the critically acclaimed collections Black Country (Chatto, 2014); The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto, 2018); The Dereliction (Hercules Editions, 2021) a collaboration with artist Tom Hicks; and most recently The Home Child (Chatto, 2023), a novel in verse. Liz’s work, described as “a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands” (Guardian), celebrates the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Liz has received the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and Forward Prizes. Her poem ‘Homing’, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus.

Yomi Ṣode is a Nigerian British writer. His debut collection ‘Manorism’, published by Penguin in October 2022 alongside a stage adaptation at the Southbank Centre, is shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 and the T S Eliot Prize 2022. He was shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2021, and received the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. Yomi's acclaimed one-man show COAT toured nationally to sold-out audiences, including at the Brighton Festival, Roundhouse Camden and the Battersea Arts Centre. In 2020 his libretto Remnants, written in collaboration with award-winning composer James B. Wilson and performed with Chineke! Orchestra premiered on BBC Radio 3.

In 2021, his play, and breathe… premiered at the Almeida Theatre to rave reviews. Yomi is a Complete Works alumnus and a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. He is the founder of BoxedIn, First Five, The Daddy Diaries, and mentorship programme, 12 in 12.

Vanessa Kisuule is a writer and performer based in Bristol. She has won over ten slam titles including The Roundhouse Slam 2014, Hammer and Tongue National Slam 2014 and the Nuoryican Poetry Slam. She has been featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, and Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Blue Peter, Don't Flop and TEDx in Vienna. She has appeared at an array of festivals and was Glastonbury Festival's Resident Poet in 2019.  She has been invited to perform all over the world, from Belgium to Brazil to Bangladesh. Her poem on the historic toppling of Edward Colston's statue 'Hollow' gained over 600,000 views on Twitter in three days. She has two poetry collections published by Burning Eye Books and her work was Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prize Anthology 2019. She has written for publications including The Guardian, NME and Lonely Planet and is the co tutor for the Southbank New Poets Collective for 2021/2022. She was the Bristol City Poet for 2018 - 2020. She is currently writing a book of essays, entitled Neverland (Canongate, June 2024) and her first novel.

Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa is a British born Barbadian raised choreopoet and PhD student in Cultural Studies. Her interdisciplinary art braids dance and poetry.

Safiya is an Obsidian Foundation alumni and an Apples & Snakes/ Jerwood Arts Poetry in Performance recipient. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals including Poetry London, Poetry Review, Wasafiri and The Caribbean Writer.

Her debut poetry collection Cane, Corn & Gully (Out-Spoken Press) arrived in November 2022. Cane, Corn & Gully was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 and the Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2023. It won Barbados’ Gine On People’s Choice Book of The Year Award 2023.