Poetry With A Punch promises an evening of political wordplay as a selection of sharp-tongued poets regale us with prose with purpose – designed to inspire, challenge and provoke.

This ever-popular annual event boasts a line-up that mixes exciting up-and-comers with established names working at the top of their game, with Barbershop Quartet playwright and poet Inua Ellams, feminist writer and activist lisa luxx, Young People’s Laureate for London Cecilia Knapp,  2020 Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year winner Jay Bernard, and a headlining performance from TS Eliot Prize shortlisted poet Anthony Anaxagorou.

Powerful, dynamic and packed full of new perspectives, it’s a larger-than-life live event set to illuminate the Alhambra Theatre’s intimate studio space.

To book for this event you’ll be taken through to the Bradford Theatres website. Please note that the £2 booking fee will be deducted at the point at sale.

About The Poets

Anthony Anaxagorou headshot

Anthony Anaxagorou

Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts.  

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 memoir looking at the politics of writing as well as the craft of poetry and fiction along with the wider publishing industry. 

He was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow of the University of Roehampton. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press.

His forthcoming poetry collection Heritage Aesthetics will be published by Granta in 2022. 

Inua Ellams

Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is an award-winning poet, playwright & curator. Identity, displacement and destiny are reoccurring themes in his work in which he mixes the old with the new, traditional with the contemporary. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon and Methuen.

Cecilia Knapp

Cecilia Knapp is the Young People’s Laureate for London. Poems have appeared in Magma, The White Review, Ambit and Bath Magg. She curated the forthcoming poetry anthology Everything is going to be Alright (Trapeze). Her debut novel is forthcoming with The Borough Press.

lisa luxx

Lisa is a poet and activist of British and Syrian heritage. Her poems are published in The Telegraph, The London Magazine and by publishers including Hatchette and Saqi Books, while broadcast on Channel 4, BBC Radio 4 and TEDx. She is winner of the Out-Spoken Prize for Performance Poetry. Fetch Your Mother’s Heart is out now.

Jay Bernard

Jay Bernard is a writer from London and the author of Surge (Chatto and Windus, 2019) an exploration of the Black British archives via the 1981 New Cross Fire. Jay won the Ted Hughes Award 2017 and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Yea  Award 2020.

About The Host

Nabz Pat

Nabz Pat is a writer and stand-up comedian, who’s performed  at the Byline Festival, Leicester Comedy Festival and New York Underground Comedy Festival. On Instagram “Nabz Pat”, takes a satirical look at Western Muslim experience. She also produces short-form documentary vlogs on her channel that explore Western Muslim cultural events/lifestyle which often feature high profile figures. Nabz regularly writes about arts and culture for a diverse set of publications such as Al Arabiya English, Arab News, Huffington Post, International Women’s Month, Emel and She Speaks We Hear.