Word Wise with Elizabeth McGeown and Alan Buckley

Word Wise is the concept of poet and performer Jamie Thrasivoulou, now compered and run by Sophie Sparham. A spoken word and poetry night uniting the best talent from around the UK and beyond, with Derby's finest performers. Word Wise won the 2019 Saboteur award for Best Regular Spoken Word Event in the UK.

£3 Early bird tickets (plus booking fee)

£5 on the door

Our featured performers are:

Elizabeth McGeown

Elizabeth McGeown is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has work published in journals including Banshee, Abridged and Under the Radar. She is the UK Slam Champion 2022 and was longlisted in the Saboteur Awards 2022 for ‘Best Spoken Word Performer’. She won the Cúirt International Festival of Literature: Spoken Word Platform 2019 and the Cursed Murphy Spoken Word Prize 2019. She has performed at Electric Picnic, First Fortnight, Lingofest, Loud Poets and Sonnet Youth. Her first poetry collection was published by Verve Poetry Press in summer 2022.

Alan Buckley

Alan Buckley is a poet, editor, and poetry tutor. He was brought up on Merseyside, and now lives in Oxford. He is the author of two pamphlets – Shiver (2009) and The Long Haul (2016) – and his first full collection, Touched, was published by HappenStance in 2020. His work has been highly commended in the Forward and Bridport prizes. He has been involved in numerous collaborative projects with poets, musicians and artists, including the live literature show The Body Beautiful, written and performed with Helen Mort. He was a founding editor of the award-winning pamphlet publisher ignitionpress, and for many years was a school writer-in-residence with First Story.