About Us

Welcome to Apples and Snakes. 
Home for Performance Poetry in England.

We develop performance poets and create fearless performance poetry programmes and live events.
We foreground Black British artists. 

We’re Apples and Snakes, the leading performance poetry organisation in England, and the original one. We support poets to develop, grow and champion performance poetry for everyone, and we deliver fearless, high-quality and innovative live events and programmes with the power to change lives. 

We nurture artists, build young people’s confidence and oracy, support the national performance poetry community and bring the best in performance poetry to more and more people. We foreground Black British poets and create platforms, connections and opportunities for poets to be seen. From first-time performers to established names, we empower poets from underserved backgrounds to grow their craft, find their voice and make a living doing what they love. 

We bring performance poetry to schools, libraries, festivals, playgrounds and stages, working with over 5,000 children and young people across England each year, and with organisations including Young Identity, Gobs Collective, UniSlam, Lewisham Looked After Children, Southbank Centre, Roundhouse, Sky Arts and the BBC. 

Our Book a Poet service puts incredible poets into classrooms, workplaces and events. Our Spoken Word Archive keeps over forty years of poetry history alive. In 2025 we merged with Poet in the City and together we are building an even stronger future for performance poetry and spoken word.

Founded by poets in 1982, we’re a registered charity and an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. We’re supported by a range of funders including The Fenton Arts Trust, Idlewild Trust, Cockayne, and John Lyon’s Charity. 

Support us and join a community that speaks truth to power.