US poet Danez Smith is the quiet revolution everybody is talking about. In a rare UK visit, get to know the voice behind this powerful writer and performer addressing some of the most important identity issues of our time.

Bringing their most recent collection Don’t Call Us Dead over to the UK for the first time, experience the powerful and hard-hitting words of poet Danez Smith, hosted by activist Imani Robinson.

Exploring issues from systemic racism and police brutality to the political stigmas attached to being HIV positive, Smith offers a timely and necessary exploration of what it means to be black and queer in America today.

In an intimate setting, experience Smith’s poetry first-hand with supporting performance and discussion from Jay Bernard, a UK-based poet trailblazing the movement for more QITPOC spaces and representation in film and poetry.

Danez Smith is a Black, queer, poz writer and performer from Minnesota, America. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead, a finalist for the National Book Award and [insert] boy, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award & the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees, and black movie, winner of the Button Poetry Prize.

Jay Bernard is from London and works as a writer and film programmer at BFI Flare (London’s LGBT film festival). They are the author of three pamphlets, The Red and Yellow Nothing, English Breakfast, and Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl, and have been featured in numerous anthologies and magazines, including TEN: The New Wave, Voice Recognition, Out of Bounds: Black British Writers and Place and Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology.

Imani Robinson is British-Caribbean and African-American organiser. She has been working collaboratively to strengthen movements and build consciousness about issues concerning anti-black racism, black feminist liberation, LGBQTNI+ rights and decolonial environmental politics. Imani is deeply invested in liberating minds and livelihoods through art, education, movement-building and dialogue.

Supported by Chatto and Windus.