Tuesday 21st October 2025
Time
19.00 BST
Description
Ian Parks read from his latest collection (see here for more information) alongside guests Bob Beagrie, Gaia Holmes, Vanessa Lampert and Charlotte Wetton.
The Poets
Ian Parks is from Mexborough. An academic and a poet, he has run the Read to Write project in Doncaster for a decade. He is the editor of Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry and the Selected Poems of Harold Massingham. His translations of the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy were a Poetry Book Society Choice. His poems have appeared in Poetry Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Morning Star, and Poetry (Chicago). He has been a Hawthornden Fellow since 1991 and has held residencies at Gladstone’s Library and at De Montfort, Leicester. His Selected Poems 1983-2023 is published by Calder Valley Poetry.
Bob Beagrie (PhD) is a poet, writer and performer. He lives in Middlesbrough and has published fourteen collections of poetry, most recently: Romanceros (Drunk Muse Press 2024), Kō (Black Light Engine Room Press’ 2023), Eftwyrd (Smokestack Books 2023), The Last Almanac (Yaffle Press 2023). When We Wake We Think We’re Whalers from Eden (Stairwell Books 2021). His poetry has been translated into Finnish, Urdu, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Estonian, Tamil, Gaelic and Karelian. A new collection ‘The Hand of Glory: a biography’ (Yaffle) is due to be released in November 2025.
Gaia Holmes was born in Halifax. Though she has left the town several times she has always been drawn back to the place by the soft, green hooks of its hills and valleys. She has been a gallery attendant, a cleaner, a lecturer, a lollipop lady and a busker and has lived in churches, caves, deserted beach houses, tall terraces and caravans. Now she is a creative writing tutor and pet/house sitter and lives in Halifax in a tiny flat above the tree line on the top floor of a ramshackle Georgian mansion that Dorothy and William Wordsworth used to visit. She is the author of 3 poetry collections, Dr James Graham’s Celestial Bed, Lifting The Piano With One Hand and Where The Road Runs out (Comma Press) and her debut collection of short stories, ‘He Used To Do Dangerous Things’, was published in October 2024.
Charlotte Wetton’s first publication I Refuse to Turn into a Hat-stand won the Michael Marks Awards 2017. She has performed at Aldeburgh and Ledbury and StAnza festivals and is a regular guest reader across the North. Her work has appeared on BBC Radio 3 and at the Manchester Festival of Libraries. She received a New Writing North award in 2019. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. Her second publication, Accessioning, is out with The Emma Press.
Vanessa Lampert’s work is widely published, most recently in The Forward Prizes anthology, The Rialto, The London Magazine, Oxford Poetry, and Poetry London. Vanessa was a co-founder of The Alchemy Spoon magazine. She has won the Café Writers, Edward Thomas, Sentinel and the Ver Poetry prize (twice) and been placed in many others including commendations in the Troubadour, Magma, Bridport, Verve, and National Competitions. In 2023 Vanessa’s full collection ‘Say It With Me’ was published by Seren.
Crooked Spire Press 