Two poetry readings at the KSH

Join us for two afternoons of poetry readings here at the Keats-Shelley House.

Please note that both events have now sold out.

On Saturday 13 April at 5 pm, we will be joined by KSH Poet-in-Residence for 2024, Scarlett Sabet, who will be reading a selection of her own poetry. 

On Tuesday 16 April at 6pm, the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, will read a selection of poems from his wide range of collections, as well as works by Lord Byron. 

Admission is Free but booking is required due to the limited number of seats (write to info@keats-shelley-house.org). Entry from 4.45 pm onwards.

Scarlett Sabet is a poet and writer, hailed by The Telegaph as ‘a rising star in the world of poetry’. She has performed at Hay Festival, Byline Festival, and Cheltenham Literary Festival, Shakespeare&Co in Paris, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C, City Lights in San Francisco, Lowell, US, for the Kerouac Centenary Festival, and at the Gulf of Poets Festival in Lerici, Italy for the Keats Shelley House. Scarlett has four self-published collections of poetry, and in 2020 she released the spoken word album Catalyst, produced by Jimmy Page. In early 2023, Scarlett published a moving new poem A Flag for Hope, with MIR. She is a volunteer for Bookmark Reading Charity and is currently working on her new collection.

Simon Armitage is the current British national Poet Laureate (2019-2029). He has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes, an Eric Gregory Award, a major Lannan Award, a Cholmondeley Award, the Spoken Word Award (Gold), the Ivor Novello Award for song-writing, BBC Radio Best Speech Programme, Television Society Award for Documentary and Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. He won the 2017 PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation and was awarded the 2018 Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.
In 1999 Armitage was named the Millennium Poet. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Armitage was awarded the CBE for services to poetry in 2010 and presented with the Hay Medal for Poetry at the 25th Hay Festival in 2012.
He is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and was elected to serve as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford for 2015-2019. In Spring 2019, he held the post of Holmes Visiting Professor at Princeton University, USA.
As part of his laureateship, Simon Armitage is working to develop The National Poetry Centre in Leeds, Yorkshire, as a major new headquarters for poetry in the UK.