Guardian poetry reviewer and The Craft editor Rishi Dastidar hosts an hour of readings. Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year nominee Rachel Long’s My Darling From The Lions was a TIME book of 2020 and shortlisted for the Costa. Festival favourite Jeremy Robson covers Picasso, post-Brexit chaos, the horrors of recent Jewish history and more in Chagall’s Moon. National Jewish Book Award winner Sarah Blake’s epic poem of survival In Springtime follows a nameless protagonist lost in the woods. And Ruth Weiss Emerging Poet winner Oakley Flanagan‘s G&T is a long poem in free-verse and prose, exploring queerness, sexuality and shame.

Sarah Blake is the author of Clean Air, a cli-fi domestic thriller, Naamah, a novel reimagining the story of Noah’s ark, and poetry collections Mr. West, Let’s Not Live on Earth, and In Springtime. She received the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction and a Literature Fellowship from the NEA. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Catapult, The American Poetry Review, and The Kenyon Review. She lives outside of London, UK.

Oakley Flanagan is a writer and poet from the West Midlands, by way of Ireland. As a playwright: This Queer House, VAULT Festival, directed by Masha Kevinovna, produced by OPIA Collective. Their poetry appears in bath magg, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Under the Radar and Wasafiri. Oakley is an alum of Roundhouse Poetry Collective and The London Library Emerging Writer Programme. Their pamphlet is forthcoming with Out-Spoken Press.

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.

Jeremy Robson was a key figure in the poetry reading scene of the 1960s and 1970s, poetry critic of Tribune, editor of several landmark anthologies, artistic director of Centre 42, and instigator of the large-scale Poetry and Jazz in Concert events in association with the composer/pianist Michael Garrick. He has published a number of books of poetry, including Blues in the Park, Subject Matters and The Heartless Traffic (all published by Smokestack). Robson founded and ran Robson Books for forty years, and Biteback recently published a memoir Under Cover: A Poet’s Life in Publishing. He and his wife Carole live in London.

A poem from Rishi Dastidar’s debut Ticker-tape was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2018. A second book, Saffron Jack, was published in 2020, and he is editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century. His third collection, Neptune’s Projects, will be published by Nine Arches Press in May 2023. He is also co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair).