What is the Great Big Poetry Party?

An online event where children and their families can dive into the world of poetry. This event helps develop poetry skills while showcasing performances from Simon Mole, Gecko and an invited guest poet. Best of all, it’s completely free and takes place via Zoom, advance booking essential. To reserve your place, simply click ‘Book Now’ button below

Details

Sunday 30th November Time: 4pm Age Guidance: 4 – 11yrs
Cost: Free, booking essential
Running time: 50mins
Location: Zoom

Still not sure? Hear what others had to say:

“Brilliant, fantastic”
“Fun, energetic & full of poetry, storytelling & music!”
“A beautiful mixture of performance and involvement, great to have good music/songs alongside professional poets.”
“Great idea, accessible, good time of day for families, welcome change from TV”

Follow Simon Mole online:

SOCIAL MEDIA #MoleGecko
Simon Mole: Website: www.simonmole.com | Facebook: @simonmolepoet
Instagram: @Si_mole | YouTube: youtube.com/simonmole
Gecko: Website: www.geckoofficial.com | Facebook: @geckoband
TikTok: @geckomusic | Instagram: @geckoofficial

Follow Karl Nova

Karl Nova: Website https://karlnova.tumblr.com/
Instagram – @karlnova | Facebook – @KarlNova

Show Credits

Hosted & Facilitated by Simon Mole & Gecko, Featuring Karl Nova
Funded by Arts Council England & Apples and Snakes
Supported by Rua Arts

In Season 4 of Apples and Snakes: The Podcast, 10 Black British performance poets and artists speak openly about their craft, reflecting on how poetry transforms personal experiences into empowering moments that connect us all.

The podcast is for anyone curious about the creative process and the artistry of performance poetry, for artists and those new to the genre. They are an invitation to listen to the heart of performance poetry by Black poets in a bold, vulnerable, and profoundly human way.

“This podcast gives flowers to the people who paved the way” Yomi Sode, podcast host

From 21 October, we will release a new episode on Tuesday. You can listen along on your ususal listening channels or watch along on our Youtube channel. We will also share the podcast on our site.

Hosted by Yomi Sode, the season features conversations with Dean Atta, El Crisis, Kareem Parkins Brown, Keith Jarrett, Reece Williams, Salena Godden, Suli Breaks, Travis Alabanza, Zakariye Abdillahi, plus a surprise guest.

This is an Apples and Snakes Podcast with sound production by Drew Horley.

Watch/listen to the episodes:

Ep 1 – Kareem Parkins Brown
Ep 2 – Dean Atta
Ep 3 – Salena Godden

A monthly poetry meetup, for women aged 27 plus, cultivating community and creative exchange. 

In partnership with Apples & Snakes, TWENTY-SEVEN is a free monthly meetup for women aged 27 plus to engage in their creativity and empower them in building a supportive, intergenerational community through poetry.

Guided by poet & cultural producer Koko Brown, led by the women in the room, each session combines time to write and time to share in an informal, communal space. 

Please note that the Tuesday 31 March session start time is earlier than previous sessions.

Session Dates – 10am – 11:00am:
31 March 2026 
28 April 2026

Are these sessions for me?
These sessions are for women who enjoy writing poetry in notebooks, on the Notes app or just random scraps of paper. These sessions are for women who came across a professional poet and would love to share that brilliant poem they found. These sessions are for women who want to explore and express their creative potential… and build a community along the way.

What can I expect?
1 hour dedicated to your writing, sharing and your creative self.

You can bring something you’re currently working on, use the session prompt to get started on something new or see where the mood takes you – there are no expectations!

Each session begins with Koko leading a short check-in, sharing a poem & a prompt. From here we’ll have about 20 minutes for writing and 20 minutes of open space for us to collectively share.

If you’d like to share something – this could be your own writing, work from professional poets or even an interesting poetry podcast you’ve found – you can sign up in the session. You’ll have roughly 3 minutes (so we can hear from as many people as possible) but, other than that, there are no boundaries. 

What do I need?
– Access to Zoom (via laptop, tablet or smartphone) for our cameras-on session. 
– Whatever you’d normally use to write with – this is a judgement free zone!
– Space to allow yourself to be a little selfish & focus on you

When AI Prompts Us: Queering the Predictable

A workshop with Hannah Silva exploring experimental approaches to writing in conversation with Large Language Models. Silva’s memoir ‘My Child, the Algorithm’ was one of the first books to engage creatively with AI, its “hallucinations” and glitches. Join her exploration into ways of neuroqueering today’s models. We will experiment with linguistic code-switching, inventive prompts, and ways of harnessing AI’s strengths.

Through practical exercises, we will discover how to transform AI from a tool of linguistic prediction into a collaborator in linguistic subversion. We will play with techniques for using AI to amplify and queer rather than flatten the edges of language, finding radical new forms of expression at the intersection of human and machine creativity. This isn’t about how to use AI to write better, but about how engaging with AI might prompt us to think and write differently.

This online, free, workshop is 1hr long, with 30 mins Q&A  at the end.

This is a small workshop with only 20 participants. Please only book if you are certain you can attend.

About Hannah Silva

HANNAH SILVA is a writer and performer confronting big ideas through formal innovation and a seriously playful approach to language and technology. Their work spans BBC radio dramas—winning the Tinniswood Award for best script—and two decades of critically acclaimed poetry and performance.Their sound poetry album ‘Talk in a bit’ was among The Wire’s top 25 albums of 2016.

Their latest book, My Child, the Algorithm (Footnote Press UK/Softskull Press North America), weaves memoir and fiction through conversations with a toddler and an early open source language model, exploring queer single parenting and love. It was named one of Granta’s Books of the Year 2023.

Most recently, an extract from Silva’s current writing on housing and universal credit earned a place on the 2024 Orwell Prize shortlist for Reporting Homelessness

Kick back in the comfort of your own home to enjoy a huge helping of Poems, Raps and Randomness!

If you enjoyed the wild wordplay and legendary lyrics at The Great Big Dinosaur Show, you’re sure to love The Great Big Poetry Party!

Join in with Simon Mole and Gecko’s inspired improvisation and enjoy performances from one of the greatest guest poets in the land: Arji Manuelpillai. Arji will show you there is more than one way to pen a poem!

Details

Thursday 5 June – 4-5pm
Age Guidance: 4 – 11yrs

Free, booking essential Running time: 50mins
This event is online, via Zoom
This is a 50-minute online event where children and their families can dive into the world of poetry. This engaging session will help develop poetry skills while showcasing performances from a variety of invited guest poets.

Hosted & Facilitated by Simon Mole & Gecko, Featuring Arji Manuelpillai
Funded by Arts Council England & Apples and Snakes
Supported by Rua Arts

Join us for a transformative afternoon of poetry and conversation as celebrated poets Mahogany L. Browne and Nikita Gill come together to honour International Women’s Day with their words of power, honesty, and perseverance. This intimate lecture and reading will explore the intersections of identity, empowerment, and the role of poetry in shaping a better world.

Come and celebrate the power of women’s voices and stories with these extraordinary poets, and leave inspired to continue shaping your own narrative.

Saturday 8 March @ 4pm on Zoom. This event is free.

Produced by Apples and Snakes in partnership with Young Identity.

Sign up to take part in this online event. We will send you the Zoom link closer to the time.

maHOGANY L. BROWNE

Mahogany L. Browne, a Kennedy Center’s Next 50 fellow and MacDowell Arts Advocacy Awardee, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator.

Browne received fellowships from All Arts, Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Baldwin for the Arts, Cave Canem, Hawthornden, Poets House, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, Wesleyan University, & UCross. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky (optioned for a play by Steppenwolf Theater), Black Girl Magic, and banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby.

Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne currently tours Chrome Valley (highlighted in Publishers Weekly and The New York Times) and is the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize winner.

Mahogany L. Browne holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree awarded by Marymount Manhattan College, and is the inaugural poet-in-residence at Lincoln Center.

Follow Mahogany’s work:
Website I Insta

NIKITA GILL

Nikita Gill is an Irish-Indian poet, playwright, writer, actor and illustrator living in the south of England. She has published seven collections of poetry including Wild Embers, Fierce Fairytales, Great Goddesses, Where Hope Comes From and These Are The WordsShe is the editor of the poetry anthology SLAM! and her book, a novel in verse called The Girl and Goddess was published by Ebury on National Poetry Day 2020. She has also published a novel in verse for Doctor Who’s 60th Anniversary called The Angel of Redemption and her children’s audiobook Animal Tales From India won Highly Commended in the Week Junior Kids Awards. Her next book, Hekate, the first novel in a loosely connected trilogy about the Greek goddesses of the Underworld, will be published in autumn 2025 by Simon & Schuster in the UK and Little, Brown in US. Her work has been nominated for the Carnegie medal, shortlisted for the CLIPPA and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize.

Follow Nikita’s work:
Insta

Photo credit: Nikita Gill – Alex Cameron

TWENTY-SEVEN is a free monthly meetup for women aged 27 plus to engage in their creativity and empower them in building a supportive, intergenerational community through poetry.

Guided by poet & cultural producer Koko Brown, led by the women in the room, each session combines time to write and time to share in an informal, communal space. 

With only 27 spaces available, each session is limited, and we ask that you cancel your ticket if you can no longer attend. This will then be offered to another member of the community on the waiting list.

A monthly poetry meetup, for women aged 27 plus, cultivating community and creative exchange. 

In partnership with Apples & Snakes, TWENTY-SEVEN is a free monthly meetup for women aged 27 plus to engage in their creativity and empower them in building a supportive, intergenerational community through poetry.

Guided by poet & cultural producer Koko Brown, led by the women in the room, each session combines time to write and time to share in an informal, communal space. 

With only 27 spaces available, each session will be available to book 2 months in advance and we ask that you cancel your ticket if you can no longer attend. This will then be offered to another member of the community on the waiting list.

Session Dates – 8:00pm – 9:00pm:
28 October 2025
25 November 2025
27 January 2026
24 February 2026
31 March 2026 
28 April 2026 

Are these sessions for me?
These sessions are for women who enjoy writing poetry in notebooks, on the Notes app or just random scraps of paper. These sessions are for women who came across a professional poet and would love to share that brilliant poem they found. These sessions are for women who want to explore and express their creative potential… and build a community along the way.

What can I expect?
1 hour dedicated to your writing, sharing and your creative self.

Each session begins with Koko leading a short check-in, sharing a poem & a prompt. From here we’ll have about 20 minutes for writing and 20 minutes of open space for us to collectively share.

You can bring something you’re currently working on, use the session prompt to get started on something new or see where the mood takes you – there are no expectations!

If you’d like to share something – this could be your own writing, work from professional poets or even an interesting poetry podcast you’ve found – you can sign up in the session. You’ll have roughly 3 minutes (so we can hear from as many people as possible) but, other than that, there are no boundaries. 

Are these sessions for me?
These sessions are for women who enjoy writing poetry in notebooks, on the Notes app or just random scraps of paper. These sessions are for women who came across a professional poet and would love to share that brilliant poem they found. These sessions are for women who want to explore and express their creative potential… and build a community along the way.

What can I expect?
1 hour dedicated to your writing, sharing and your creative self. Each session begins with Koko leading a short check in, sharing a poem & a prompt. From here we’ll have about 20 minutes for writing and 20 minutes of open space for us to collectively share.

You can bring something you’re currently working on, use the session prompt to get started on something new or see where the mood takes you – there are no expectations! If you’d like to share something – this could be your own writing, work from professional poets or even an interesting poetry podcast you’ve found – you can sign up in the session. You’ll have roughly 3 minutes (so we can hear from as many people as possible) but, other than that, there are no boundaries. 

What do I need?
– Access to Zoom (via laptop, tablet or smartphone) for our cameras-on session. 
– Whatever you’d normally use to write with – this is a judgement free zone!
– Space to allow yourself to be a little selfish & focus on you.

About KOKO BROWN

Born and bred in North-West London and ‘works well with others’, according to all of her school reports. Koko Brown is a  multidisciplinary artist who blends theatre, spoken word and live vocal looping in all her work.

She takes pride in her roots and creates work about being the other – mainly focusing on race, mental health, sexuality, gender, and identity.

She has performed with venues such as the National Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, and the Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh). Her work has been performed at the Latitude Festival, Soho Theatre, Brainchild, and Glastonbury Festival. She recently toured in Hive City Legacy with international performance collective Hot Brown Honey.

She is an Alumni Associate Artist at Ovalhouse theatre and an Alumni Resident Artist at the Roundhouse. Koko is also a qualified Audio Describer for Theatre & Live Performance and aims to continue making all her work #AccessibleAsStandard.

Follow Koko’s work:
Insta

Apples and Snakes are at UnderOne Festival between 24-25 July as a supporting partner to inspire your creativity and enhance your well-being during the event. 

Our poet-in-residence for the UnderOne festival is Kat François who is scheduled to perform on 24 July and run a Journalling workshop on the 25 July.

You can also hear TS Eliot Prize-winning poet Joelle Taylor; emerging poets Bhumika Billa and Gafar Fashola; Apples and Snakes Artistic Director, Lisa Mead; and Chair of our Board, Amerah Saleh. 

Catch us at these times:

Lunchtime performances:
Bhumika Billa – Wed 24 July
Gafar Fashola – Thu 25 July

About the performers:

Kat François

Kat François is a Performance and Movement based Artist, Writer and Educator, Writing and Performance Coach, BBC TV and World Poetry Slam Champion.
Kat has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Saturday Live and Woman’s Hour, as well as BBC TV & Sky, and featured on BBC television’s Paul Whitehouse: Our Troubled Rivers. Kat has written and performed two solo plays and three solo comedy shows.
She recently won a short story competition, and her piece, INDIGO WATERS, is featured in HIDDEN REALMS, SHORT STORIES, published by Flame Tree Publishing. RAISING LAZARUS, her play about Caribbean soldiers in the First World War, has also just been published (TSL Publications.)

Joelle Taylor

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection, C+NTO & Othered Poems, won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of the University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023.

GAFAR FASHOLA

Gafar Fashola is a Nigerian born poet who grew up in the heart of South London.
Gafar is a contemporary poet who uses raw emotions and profound insights, with a gift for crafting elaborate verses that delve deep into the human experience. Gafar moved to the UK at the age of 5 , and throughout the years developed a keen sense of observation and a thirst for understanding the complexities of human relationships. This early exposure to both diversity and adversity served as the fertile ground upon which his poetic journey would take root.
Gafar’s poetry is characterized by its unapologetic honesty and its fearless exploration of topics often left unspoken. He uses his verses to shine a light on the pressing social issues of our time, exploring issues from systemic inequalities to mental health challenges. His words are a call to action, urging society to reflect and effect change.

Bhumika Billa

Bhumika Billa is an emerging poet based in Cambridge (UK) and Delhi (India). Her poetry engages with the themes of gender, mental health, heritage, climate justice, and dance. She has previously performed at the UK UniSlam, Toronto Poetry Slam, and Airplane Poetry Movement among others. Outside poetry, she is a Kathak dancer, an author, and a legal researcher at the University of Cambridge.

Word’s A Stage is Apples and Snakes’ poetic performance development programme aimed at poets aged 21-30. We’re thrilled to say that it’s back for 2025.

We are looking to bring together 12 emerging artists from this age group to equip them with the skills and confidence to advance in their performance poetry and writing careers. This is a great opportunity to learn from experts and, through peer learning, form long-lasting connections with each other as well as networking within the sector.

Participants will commit to attending eight online workshops, during which they’ll work with poets, performers and facilitators with an end goal to create a 15-minute performance set. 

The sessions will focus on a different area each week, led by tutors including Malika Booker, Nick Field, Bohdan Piasecki, Myah Jeffers, Vanessa Kisuule, and more. Workshop sessions will include writing focus, thinking about the audience, performance to camera, looking after your voice, connecting with your word, and more.

Following the online sessions, participants will attend an in-person five-day writing and performance residential hosted by Arvon.

The development programme is structured so that the online sessions directly impact the Arvon retreat. To ensure the best outcome possible, we require you to attend all of the online sessions (within reason).

Please think carefully before applying to make sure you can commit to the programme as much as possible.

[APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED]

Online sessions dates

You must be able to attend the following online sessions – these will be held online via Zoom between 7-9:30pm:

June 2nd
June 9th
June 16th
June 23rd
June 30th
July 7th
July 14th
July 21st

Arvon Residential

The dates for the 2025 residential will be 18th – 23rd August and will take place at The Hurst, Arvon House.

The Hurst is a place you can write, without the distractions of daily life. Once the home of playwright John Osborne, it’s surrounded by the idyllic forest-covered Shropshire Hills. Giving you the perfect space to write.

There’s more information about this Arvon location on their website here. You can also find all a comprehensive accessibility guide about the venue on their website.

Please note that Arvon can be an intense process and we will not have a wellbeing professional on site. We ask you to consider your own selfcare/wellbeing prior to applying. 

How to Apply

APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.

We will be in touch by 6pm, 23rd May on the outcome of your application.

As part of our commitment against ableism, we will ask for your access requirements only if your application is successful.

Photo credit: Suzi Corker

Limited in person tickets, online screening tickets available.

What is intensive care? What does it mean to put someone into an induced coma? How is it done? How do people get better from such treatment? What effects happen to patients? 

“In March 2020, I became ill with Covid and after a few days in hospital my condition worsened so doctors and I reached a decision that I should be put into an induced coma in intensive care. This lasted for over 40 days followed by some bewildering days while I tried to figure out what had happened to me. One way for me to make sense of it has been to make a ten-minute film in which I ‘hear’ what the nurses write in my ‘Patient Diary’, what my wife tells the family that’s going on with me and what doctors inform me. Even so, I show in the film that I have a feeling that I have been reduced to a helpless body pulled apart into bits such that it’s my job, following the coma to put it back together.”

– Michael Rosen

Join us for the premiere screening of this film followed by conversation and Q&A between Michael and Professor Dr Hugh Montgomery – the consultant on Michael’s intensive care ward and who we hear from (briefly) in the film. 

event update

In-person tickets have now sold out. As these tickets were very limited, please do cancel them if you can no longer attend. No need to let us know, just cancel them.

For online tickets – we will be live streaming the event and hold a Q&A online for you to ask questions. We will send you an email closer to the date with the link to this premier.

Any questions, please email info@applesandsnakes.org

Supported by Team London Bridge as part of the MediCulture Festival.

Join Safia Elhillo for this online event for International Women’s Day

Take time for yourself for a moment of reflection, and join poet and writer Safia Elhillo for this online workshop. Create a poem under the gentle guidance of this powerful and fantastic artist.

This event marks the announcement of our upcoming symposium Saluting New Daughters of Africa – celebrating the history of black British publishing centring Black women writers via the work of Margaret Busby, Britain’s youngest and first black female book publisher co-founding the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby (A & B) in the 1960s.

New Daughters of Africa is an extraordinary collection of contemporary writing by 200 women writers of African descent, including Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

About Safia Elhillo

“I am rapt, finding here the hurt and the heft of girlhood. All the old silences, all the unuttered shames are ruptured, tended to, and—finally—named. Elhillo is a poet of wisdom, rigor, and vindicating care.” —Tracy K. Smith

“Elhillo’s poems dig deep into how shame is passed down generations of women. With these conversations comes power. Elhillo sings of the autonomy she imagines for her girls.” —NPR

Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which received the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award; the national bestseller Girls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2022); and the novel in verse Home Is Not A Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and received a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor. Her second novel in verse, Bright Red Fruit (Random House, 2024) is an unflinching exploration of a teenager’s journey into the poetry scene and the dangerous new relationship that could threaten all her dreams.

Of Elhillo’s most recent poetry collection, Aracelis Girmay notes, “Safia Elhillo traces the ongoing devastations of patriarchy while simultaneously making a refuge out of language, kinship, and sound. Electric, violet, plural with girls, this work pulses with memory and refusal, awakening language with its lucid imagination. Girls That Never Die is a book of resuscitations. Brilliant. And fierce.” In an interview with Hazem Fahmy, Elhillo spoke to the relationship between music and poetics in her work: “My poetics are really interested in memory; its failures and mysteries. For me, a song is like a container of the emotion I felt in the early days of encountering the song. When I talk about, or refer to, music, it’s shorthand for me engaging with some sort of memory or feeling that’s frozen in a moment. Music does so much locating and contextual work. Economy in a poem is very important to me, so I love being able to create a landscape and a time period just by naming a song.”

Elhillo’s work appears in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others, and in anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and The Penguin Book of Migration Literature. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2020.

Her fellowships include a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. Elhillo received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work has been translated into several languages, and commissioned by Under Armour, Cuyana, and the Bavarian State Ballet.

To celebrate International Day of Persons With Disabilities, we’re bringing you Balancing Act.

This event will be BSL interpreted.

Balancing Act is a performance that celebrates the work of disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent poets. We’re balancing the playing field and spotlighting the work of poets who write about a range of subjects, including but not limited to disability.

Ableism is unfortunately very present in our society and we’re keen to tackle it in a variety of ways, including putting on fun gigs like this.

Everyone is welcome to join this online poetic performance.

Join host Helen Heckety (formerly Helen Seymour) with guest performances from Jamie Hale, Kate Fox, Miss Jacqui. Joining will also be emerging artists Matt Alton and Jasmin Thien.

This gig is free to attend and will be held online, via Zoom.

A warm and springtime welcome back to Red Sky Sessions. Throughout five workshops, participants will explore themes and techniques to improve their writing, develop their craft and hone their skills through a series of workshops and talks from some of the country’s leading poets and facilitators.

This free programme is designed to accommodate emerging writers who have been unable to apply for other programs due to their age. It’s also for those who have taken a break from writing and are looking to reengage or those who have been traditionally underserved by development opportunities. So, if you’re aged 18-infinity and looking to get writing, then this is for you.

Lead Tutor – Bohdan Piasecki

Bohdan Piasecki is a poet from Poland based in Birmingham. A committed performer, he has taken his poems from the upstairs room in an Eastbourne pub to the main stage of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from underground Tokyo clubs to tramways in Paris, from a bookshop in Beijing to an airfield in Germany, from niche podcasts to BBC Radio. He enjoys the creative chaos of big field festivals just as much as the composed concentration of literary events. Bohdan was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem: Performed in 2023, the category’s inaugural year.

Bohdan founded the first poetry slam in Poland before moving to the UK to get a doctorate in translation studies. He has worked as Director of Education on the Spoken Word in Education MA course at Goldsmiths University, and was the Midlands Producer for Apples and Snakes between 2010 and 2017. He is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. He also works as Creative Producer, and sits on the board of the Poetry Translation Centre.

Guest Tutors

Every week, a new guest will lead the session alongside Bohdan. We have confirmed guest tutors: Laurie Bolger, Cecilia Knapp, Deanna Roger, Rachel Long and one more TBC:

Laurie Bolger

Laurie Bolger is a London based Writer. Her work has featured at Glastonbury Festival, the Royal Albert Hall, TATE, Sky Arts & BBC platforms. Laurie has been running creative workshops for the past decade & is founder of The Creative Writing Breakfast Club bringing people to write together every Sunday morning 10am via Zoom. Laurie has written for major brands, charities and visual artists. She is currently working on her second book Call Me Lady a collection of poems celebrating autonomy, love and her working class Irish heritage.

X @lauriebolger | Instagram @lauriebolger_ | http://www.lauriebolger.com

Cecilia Knapp

Cecilia Knapp is a poet, playwright and novelist and the Young People’s Laureate for London 2020/2021. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward prize for best single poem. She is the winner of the 2021 Ruth Rendell award and has been shortlisted for both the Rebecca Swift Women’s prize and the Outspoken poetry prize. Her debut poetry collection Peach Pig was published by Corsair in 2022. Her poems have appeared in  The Financial Times, The White Review, Wasafiri, Popshot, Ambit, Magma and bath magg and anthologised. She curated the anthology Everything is Going to be alright: Poems for When you Really Need Them, published by Trapeze in 202

X and Instagram: @ceciliaknapp

Deanna Rodger

Deanna Rodger is an international writer, performer and facilitator.  She won the UK Poetry Slam aged 18 and quickly established herself as a leading force for contemporary poetry, securing titles such as ELLE UK’s ’30 inspirational women under 30′, The Female Lead’s ‘20 in their 20’s and Cosmopolitan’s No.1 Trailblazing Woman, as well as winning a Rising Star award from the Hospital Club. She is currently the third recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award at the University of Bristol’s Theatre Collection. Deanna teaches Writing Poetry for Performance with Benjamin Zephaniah at Brunel University and tutors at the School of Communication Arts. Her collection ‘I Did It Too’ is out now.

X and Instagram: @deannarodger

Rachel Long

is a writer, and the founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, which was housed, for six years, at the Southbank Centre, in London. Her debut collection, My Darling from the Lions was published by Picador in the UK, in 2020, and by Tin House, in the US, in 2021. It was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Jhalak Prize Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour. 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.

X: @rachelnalong

Vanessa Kisuule

Vanessa Kisuule is a writer and performer based in Bristol. She has won over ten slam titles including The Roundhouse Slam 2014, Hammer and Tongue National Slam 2014 and the Nuoryican Poetry Slam. She has been featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, and Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Blue Peter, Don’t Flop and TEDx in Vienna. She has appeared at an array of literary and music festivals and was Glastonbury Festival’s Resident Poet in 2019.  She has been invited to perform all over the world from Belgium to Brazil to Bangladesh.

Vanessa is also a workshop facilitator with years of experience working in schools, universities, corporate events, prisons and youth centres. She is also available for one to one mentoring and support with writing projects. Both the approach and the end goal of the mentoring can be tailored to your needs, with an emphasis on holistic as well as creative growth.

X: @Vanessa_Kisuule

Key Dates

• Session 1 Wednesday 3 April – Laurie Bolger
• Session 2 Wednesday 10 April – Cecilia Knapp
• Session 3 Wednesday 17 April – Deanna Rodger
• Session 4 Wednesday 24 April – Rachel Long
• Session 5 Wednesday 1 May – Vanessa Kisuule

All sessions will be online, via Zoom, 6.30-8.30pm.

Please note your Zoom link will say 6pm, but that’s for the tutors to join. We will open the room at 6.30pm.

How to Register

Sign up using the button below.

If you’ve previously been part of a Red Sky Program you are welcome to sign up again as every iteration is different. No need to ask us, just sign up!

If you are having issues with the Zoom link, or any questions, please contact owen@applesandsnakes.org

WORDCUP2023: The Showcase

Catch the freshest new talent from across the country, as young poets aged 11 – 17 share their words in the final showcase of WORDCUP2023.

Following a series of workshops back in their home towns, the teams have created team poems each that they will perform as part of this national showcase.

Hosted by Jacob Sam-La Rose with performances from WORDCUP celebrators Joelle Taylor and Danez Smith.

For FREE tickets, send an email to rsvp@applesandsnakes.org with the subject line SHOWCASE, stating your name and how many tickets you would like.

Please check the Manchester Poetry website for more information about the venue.

We will also be live-streaming the event on our Youtube channel. The event will premier at 7.30pm. You do not need to rsvp to the live stream, just follow along online.