Poets in Your City
Poets In Your City is Apples and Snakes’ bold new performance poetry programme championing emerging poets.
Taking place in different cities, it brings together poets, communities, and organisations through poetry. It creates skills development and performance opportunities for local poets, acting as a catalyst for community-led creative networks to grow. Poets In Your City aims to strengthen local creative and cultural life so that it continues beyond the programme.
What’s Happening?
In 2025 and 2026, we’ve been working with two lead poets to run the programme, AFLO. the poet in Brighton and Kareem Parkins-Brown in Margate. Through workshops, meetups, and live performance experiences, these poets have been exploring how to create space for connection, creativity, and shared storytelling.
The programme supports emerging talent, offering pathways for local poets to develop, grow, and create work reflecting their community’s diverse voices. The lead poets will develop their own practice alongside supporting the ten emerging poets and ten community members taking part. Together, they build a sustainable network to inspire and empower a connected, creative city, transform how stories are shared and expand poetry into new spaces and to new audiences.
As a celebration of Poets In Your City, each city will host a performance poetry night of Apples and Snakes’ legendary Jawdance.
About the Poets
AFLO. the poet
AFLO. is a spoken word artist, activist and academic who uses poetry as a vehicle to disrupt the status quo and inspire social change. With a bold voice rooted in lived experience, AFLO. uses poetry as a tool for resistance, healing, and radical honesty. Her performances blend sharp social commentary with deep emotional resonance, exploring themes of race, identity, mental health, and social justice.
AFLO. Talking about being part of Poets in your City says, “Being selected by Apples and Snakes for this project is a real game changer. I’m excited to carve out a clearer landscape for the poetry scene in Brighton, and create opportunities for people across the city to engage in the power of performance poetry – solidifying it as a pillar of creative expression. I’ve focused the workshops on key elements to crafting a sustainable poetry career. From reclaiming traditional poetic forms, to making your poetry more memorable, to taking up space on stage in more than a literal sense – these workshops aim to equip artists with the tools they need to make an impact in the world of performance poetry and beyond.”
Follow AFLO. : @aflo.thepoet | Linktree
Kareem Parkins-Brown
Kareem is a writer and visual artist who is obsessed with humour, surrealism, grief and Londonisms. He performs at museums, art galleries, libraries, cafes, bookshops, pubs, back gardens, conference centres, people’s dreams, nightmares all over. His first pamphlet, ‘Oi You Lot’, was published in 2024 by Little Betty. It was Radio 4’s Poetry Book of the Month.
Kareem Parkins-Brown, talking about being part of Poets in your City, says, “I’m particularly excited to meet Margate’s unique perspective on life, the world, community, and various other themes people might bring into the workshops. Poets of all abilities and perspectives. In the workshops, we’ll be exploring how we can constantly generate ideas, what it means to respond to a place poetically, performance technique and choices, and possible career advice.”
Follow Kareem: @parkinsbrown | Oi You Lot
Poets in Your City is produced by Apples and Snakes, and the Programme Director is Natalie Fiawoo.
With thanks to Margate Arts Club, Afrori Books in Brighton, and Brighton Book Festival.
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