Finding the Words with Jill Abram, Aoife Mannix and Joshua Seigal

Come and listen to some of the best poets from Yorkshire and beyond at Finding the Words, our relaxed and welcoming online poetry evening.

Jill Abram is autistic, Jewish and lives with fibromyalgia and coeliac disease. She grew up in Manchester, travelled the world and now lives in Brixton having retired (early) from a long career as a BBC Radio Studio Manager, specialising in making sound effects for comedy and drama programmes.

She produces and presents a variety of poetry events, including the Stablemates series of poetry and conversation, and convenes poetry communities, including 12 years as Director of the influential collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. Jill’s poems have been published and performed widely and her debut pamphlet, Forgetting My Father, is published by Broken Sleep Books.

Photo of Jill by Naomi Woddis.

Aoife Mannix’s latest collection of poems, Reconstruction, was published by Flipped Eye in 2024. She has published four previous collections, The Elephant in the Corner, Growing Up an Alien, Turn the Clocks Upside Down and Cocktails from the Ceiling. Her novel Heritage of Secrets was reissued in 2023, and she wrote the libretto for Stephen McNeff’s opera A Star Next to the Moon at the Barbican in 2024. She has been poet-in-residence for BBC Radio 4 and the Royal Shakespeare Company as well as working as a script editor for the BBC and for the young writers’ programme at the Royal Court theatre. She is currently writer-in-residence for Plot Lines and has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Joshua Seigal is an internationally renowned poet, performer and educator. He has several collections of poetry published with Bloomsbury, and has won numerous awards, including the Laugh Out Loud Book Award and The People’s Book Prize. Joshua has performed at the Edinburgh Book Festival and taken shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, and is an Official Ambassador for National Poetry Day UK.

At Explore we keep all our events free or low cost to enable everyone to attend. When you book your place, if you can, please make a donation to help with Explore's costs and enable us to continue running events like this one.

Accessibility: We want our online poetry events to be accessible to everyone. Readings take place on Zoom, and we display each poem on screen so you can read along. Zoom’s built in accessibility features, including optional captions, are also available. If you have specific access needs, please contact us at arts@exploreyork.org.uk and we’ll do our best to help.