oin us for an afternoon of quickfire talks on a whole host of poetry-related topics! The event will consist of a series of 10 minute presentations, followed by questions and discussion. Speakers Prolific but Unpublished by Hannah Chapman Hannah Chapman is a writer specialising in graphic narratives and critical biography. Her most recent essay “Casting Mr Collins: Or How a Zombie Film Returned Us to the Novel,” co-authored with Lauren Burke, appeared in Austen after 200: New Reading Spaces (Palgrave, 2022). Why ain’t poetry dead yet? by Dan Leighton By all rights, poetry should have disappeared. We barely teach it in schools. It is seen as hard, and difficult, and inaccessible. Sales are, essentially, non-existent. And yet, it is having a new-form revival on social media platforms. What does good poetry criticism look like? by Jon Stone Jon Stone is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Anglia Ruskin University and an editor at Sidekick Books. His poetry has previously won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award, the Poetry London Prize (twice) and the Sarabande International Chapbook Prize. His latest book is Instar Hotel (Sarabande, 2026). He has also published a monograph, Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games (DeGruyter, 2022). Francisco Javier Guerrero Cano and the Poetry of Sickness by James Womack James Womack is a Cambridge-based writer, translator and educator. His poetry collections are Misprint (2012), On Trust: A Book of Lies (2017), Homunculus (2020) and Why Are You Shouting? (2024).