Unsafe: Karen McCarthy Woolf in Conversation with Momtaza Mehri

Unsafe takes a disenchanted walk through the afterlives of colonialism across London and LA, illuminating the effects of capitalism on those who live at its sharp end. Situated in the midst of a reckoning with a politics of enclosure, Unsafe is an immersive meditation on place, the body, nature and the self. Whether it's via tattoos, trees or the totemic quality of cats, McCarthy Woolf pulls us into the processes of gentrification and class division with an immediacy that makes them impossible to ignore. A moving, critical and fiercely intelligent epic weaving together poetry, documentary and lyric essay, Unsafe is an interrogation of what it means to be a citizen and testimony to the remaining spaces we can call free.

Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf was a Fulbright postdoctoral scholar at UCLA in 2019, where she was poet-in-residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights. In 2025 she won an RSL-Jerwood Poetry Award (England) and a Society of Authors Cholmondeley Award. Her début An Aviary of Small Birds was an Observer Book of the Yearand her verse novel Top Doll (Dialogue, 2024) was shortlisted for the T S Eliot and Jhalak Prizes. Her work as an editor of numerous literary anthologies, from Bittersweet: black women’s contemporary poetry (The Women’s Press, 1997) to Nature Matters (co-edited with Mona Arshi, Faber, 2025) has helped bring many writers of colour across generations to light.

Momtaza Mehri is a writer and researcher working across criticism, education, and radio. Previously, she was the Poet-in-Residence at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. She has been a columnist for Tate Etc, the arts magazine published by the Tate network of galleries. Her debut poetry collection Bad Diaspora Poems recently won the 2023 Forward Prize for Best First Collection, as well as an Eric Gregory Prize. She is a recipient of a Somerset Maugham Award and a Sky Arts Award. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.Her pamphlet Doing the Most With the Least was published by Goldsmiths Press.Mehri is a former Young People’s Poet Laureate for London. She regularly works with international institutions and museums, including Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, AA School of Architecture, MoMA, University of Arts London, Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dutch Art Institute, ICA, and elsewhere. She has also presented papers, lectures, and workshops in Jakarta, New York, Berlin, Dubai, Tunis, Amsterdam, to name a few cities.

The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A and book signing. Your ticket includes a complimentary glass of wine.

Tickets: £10 General Admission, £8 Foyalty Member / £18 Book and Ticket, inc. a copy of Unsafe (RRP £12.99)
Venue: The Auditorium (Level 6) at Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road*