National Poetry Day Celebration

People's Bookshop is delighted to welcome four of the finest poets living in County Durham to the shop to celebrate National Poetry Day.

Gillian Allnutt has published 10 volumes of poetry including, How the Bicycle Shone: New & Selected Poems (2007), which received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, and, more recently, indwelling (2013), wake (2018), and lode (2025). lode was the third of her books to be nominated for the T. S. Eliot Prize in poetry. Gillian was named as the recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2016.  

Cynthia Fuller moved to the North-East in 1980 and has published seven volumes of poems, the most recent being Estuary (2015) and Safety Nets (2021) . 

Cynthia was also a poetry editor for the magazine Writing Women.and has co-edited several poetry anthologies, including The Poetry Cure (with Julia Darling, 2005) and North by North-East (with Andy Croft, 2006).

SJ Litherland was born in Warwickshire and moved to Durham in 1965. Both Counties feature in her work. She has eight published collections including, Composition in White (2017) and Marginal Future (2025). She has two Northern Writers Awards and has twice  been recommended in the National Poetry Competition. 

Eliza Mood writes poetry and fiction with a focus on environmental themes. Her novel, O Man of Clay, (2020) is a work of speculative fiction set in a flooded Hartlepool of the near future. Her recent volume of poetry It Rains in the Weather House (2026), looks at generations of a family, whose lives are connected in varying ways with landscape, weather and industrial history and was shortlisted for the Grey Hen/Hen Run Pamphlet Competition. Her poetry has been published in British and international journals and listed in several pamphlet and poetry competitions including Aurora, Bridport, Mslexia, Northern Writers, and the National Poetry Competition. 

Please come along and hear a stellar line up of poets talking about and reading from their work. 

Doors are open at 6:30 and the evening begins at 7:00pm. Tickets are £5 and include drinks and nibbles.