Vanessa Kisuule - Online Workshop

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.

Workshops will be capped at 30 participants and we expect high interest, so book now to avoid disappointment.

This workshop will be lead by Vanessa Kisuule - Thursday 22nd August 2024, 6:30pm - 8:30pm.

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.