Poetry Night

Come join us for poetry at Perkyn's N15 with Jay Bernard, Olivia Douglas, Joe Carrick-Varty and Maya Caspari. A relaxed evening of open mic hosted by award-winning poet and facilitator, Grace Atkinson. Grab a wine or tea, sigh out the day, and lean in to some words from new and experienced poets alike. Limited open mic tickets available.

All funds go to The Sameer Project.

Jay Bernard (FRSL) is an interdisciplinary writer and artist from London whose work is rooted in sound, poetry and social history. Jay was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2020 and winner of the 2017 Ted Hughes Award for their first collection Surge. Recent work includes Far from the Start, an audio installation at Studio Voltaire that re-imagines the Windrush; Blue Now, a live rendition of Derek Jarman’s film ‘Blue’; Joint, a poetic-play about the history of joint enterprise; Crystals of this Social Substance, a sound installation about young people, capitalism and money at the ‘21 Serpentine pavilion; Complicity, a pamphlet about colonial memory in the urban environment, based on the collection at the Tate; and The Last 7 Years, a digital and live sound piece produced by Art Angel. Jay is a DAAD literature fellow and a 2023/24 fellow at the Institute of Ideas and Imagination, Paris.

Joe Carrick-Varty is a British-Irish poet from Oxford. His debut collection More Sky (2023) was shortlisted for the 2023 T.S. Eliot Prize. His poems have appeared in the New Statesman, Poetry Ireland Review and Magma. His debut pamphlet Somewhere Far (The Poetry Business, 2019) won the 2018 New Poets Prize. He is a book reviewer for PN Review and the founder and co-editor of bath magg.

Olivia Douglass is a British-Nigerian writer and artist. Author of two poetry pamphlets, Unruly Blood (2024, Little Betty Press) and Slow Tongue (2018). They are the winner of The Guardian and 4th Estate 4thWrite Prize 2022 with their short story Ink. Olivia debuted their poetic performance project Ordinary Dreams at the Tate Modern in the Turbine Hall in 2024, and they were shortlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize 2020. A Barbican Young Poets alumni, their writing has appeared in publications including the Guardian, Montez Press, National Poetry Library, bathmagg, and Nothing Personal, MacGuffin. Olivia have exhibited work internationally at galleries and institutions including Galleria Duarte Sequeira (Portugal), Passa Porta Festival (Brussels), NoguerasBlanchard Gallery (Madrid) and Kunsthall Stavanger (Norway).

Maya Caspari is a London- and York-based poet, researcher, curator, and Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. Her scholarly work explores the ethics of representation, memory, violence, relationality, touch, and care, with publications in parallax, Women’s History Review, The Senses & Society, and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. She holds a PhD from the University of Leeds (2020), an MA in Comparative Literature from UCL, and a BA in English & German from Oxford. Maya is co-editor of a parallax special issue on decolonial feminisms and Associate Editor at Wasafiri magazine. Her poetry has appeared in The Poetry Review, Ambit, Butcher’s Dog, Perverse, Propel, and Wasafiri. She has received commendations and longlistings in the Forward Prizes, National Poetry Competition, and Mslexia Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her debut pamphlet, almost, with tenderness, was published by Out‑Spoken Press in 2025.