Our guests for our November event are Red Door Poets, a group of poets who meet weekly behind a red door - well, where else? - to workshop their writing. They also hold bi-monthly public readings on Zoom with guest readers, and we're delighted to welcome them - and three very talented headlining guests - to our Online Programme.​

The Guests
Helen Ivory is a poet, and collage artist who also makes shadow-boxes. Her Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems (2023) is published in the US by MadHat Press; a book of mixed media poems, Hear What the Moon Told Me, is published by KFS, and a chapbook, Maps of the Abandoned City, by SurVision. She also has work translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Spanish, Greek and Croatian as part of Versopolis. Her fifth Bloodaxe collection, The Anatomical Venus (2019), examined how women have been portrayed as ‘other’; as witches; as hysterics with wandering wombs and as beautiful corpses cast in wax, or on mortuary slabs in TV box sets. She was awarded Arts Council of England to research and write her next collection for Bloodaxe, Constructing a Witch (2024), which fixes on the monstering and scapegoating of women. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches creative writing online for the UEA/NCW.

​Paul Stephenson has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written after the November 2015 terrorist attacks; and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He helps curate Poetry in Aldeburgh. His debut collection, Hard Drive, was published by Carcanet in summer 2023.

Fiona Larkin’s debut collection, Rope of Sand, was published by Pindrop Press in 2023. The title poem was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. Her pamphlets are Vital Capacity (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and A Dovetail of Breath (2020), and she manages innovative projects with Corrupted Poetry.

The Red Door Poets
Representing the Red Door Poets as part of the evening's offerings are three of their own finest talents:

This year, Mary Mulholland’s poems have been published in bath magg, Stand, Finished Creatures, among others and accepted for Under the Radar; highly commended in the Bridport Prize, longlisted in the National Poetry Prize, Rialto Nature & Place, placed in Wolves, Teignmouth and listed in others. Her debut pamphlet is What the sheep taught me (Live Canon, 2022). She founded and co-runs Red Door Poets and co-founded and co-edits The Alchemy Spoon.

Musician and poet Chris Hardy ‘consistently hits the right note, never hits a false note’ (Roger McGough). Widely published in poetry journals, & author of several collections, Chris Hardy’s latest collection, Key to the Highway, was published in 2022 by Shoestring Press. ‘These are poems with an eye on fable and desert snakes, and an ear out for the music words make in the quiet of a page. The Key to the Highway is yours for the taking, so adventure away!’ - Helen Ivory

Lesley Sharpe teaches literature and writing in London. Her poems, reviews and essays have been published in a number of journals and anthologies, as well as short and long-listed for prizes including The London Magazine, Aesthetica, Fish, Rialto and Bridport. She edited Heron magazine for the Katherine Mansfield Society from 2017-2021, co-founded Lodestone Poets with Sarala Estruch and Dave Wakely, and is a member of Red Door Poets