Poetry Reading Group

Our poetry reading group is returning for 2025! With Zain as our guide, we will be immersing ourselves in a range of exciting voices in the world of poetry. If you’re a fellow poet, a poetry fan, or just looking for your next read, please come along for a fun evening of chatting all things verse!

We will be kicking off the year with three books from 2024. We’ll begin with the winner of the 2024 T. S. Eliot Prize, Peter Gizzi’s stunning collection Fierce Elegy. Next, we’ll be reading Ella Frear’s long-form email to an estate agent, Goodlord. Finally, we will be reading Karen McCarthy Woolf’s self-described “deeply unreliable biography/polyvocal verse novel” about a billionaire’s doll collection, Top Doll.

Here are the dates for the upcoming reading groups:

Wednesday 12th Feb - Fierce Elegy by Peter Gizzi

Tuesday 11th March - Goodlord by Ella Frears

Tuesday 8th April - Top Doll by Karen McCarthy Woolf

There’s no need to prepare but if you feel like it, please feel free to mention a poem, line or stanza you particularly liked (or disliked!) from the collection over the course of the evening.

About Top Doll...

'Extraordinarily inventive, witty, moving and profound.' Bernardine Evaristo

'If you read one novel this year, let it be Top Doll. This is innovative, exquisitely crafted storytelling at its finest.' Malika Booker

When reclusive billionaire Huguette Clark dies age 104, she leaves behind a suite of New York apartments, a meticulously upkept California mansion, at least one Monet and her vast collection of antique dolls. Having barely been outside for 50 years, the elusive Clark spoke to few - in this highly unreliable, semi-fictional miniature epic, the dolls tell all.

Theirs is a tale that takes us from their lavish Park Avenue home back in time to the slave plantations of Virginia and the palaces of Imperial Japan via the addictive hedonism of 1930s queer LA.

Joyfully irreverent, Top Doll is a story of love, betrayal, Barbies and ultimately, what it means to be human.

'An astonishing combination of depth, compassion and beauty. A constant series of delicious surprises.' Leone Ross