Poetry Club: Anthony Joseph & Rachel Long

Talk

Poetry Club returns to The Coronet Theatre for an evening of readings and conversation with two celebrated poets whose work moves between the intimate and the expansive, finding music, history and emotional truth in language. T. S. Eliot Prize winner Anthony Joseph and acclaimed poet and founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective Rachel Long read from their latest collections and discuss the inspirations, experiences and ideas that shape their writing. Anthony Joseph reads from Haunting the Black Air , his new collection of poems spanning London, New York, Trinidad and beyond. Blending poetry, history and Caribbean cosmology, the collection moves through grief and joy with musicality and formal invention, unifying life’s beautiful fragments through rhythms of jazz and speech. “ A polyphonic exploration of memory, diaspora and sound. ” – Romalyn Ante Rachel Long’s luminous new collection Sparrow on the Rooftop explores love, desire, longing and heartbreak with tenderness, wit and startling emotional precision. By turns fierce, funny and deeply moving, these poems map the complexities of intimacy and recovery. “ Rachel Long’s poems are a gift: sensual, intelligent and emotionally precise. ” – Bernardine Evaristo Anthony Joesph Anthony Joseph is a Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. His collection Sonnets for Albert won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry. He is the author of six poetry collections, three novels and numerous acclaimed albums, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Rachel Long Rachel Long is the author of My Darling from the Lions and founder of the Octavia Poetry Collective for women of colour. She has been shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize, and has received a number of major literary honours including a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Long was part of Coronet Inside Out in 2021. You can watch her video, where she reads from My Darling from the Lions , here .