Reading with Karen McCarthy Woolf and Falmouth Poetry Group

Join us for an unforgettable evening with award-winning poet Karen McCarthy Woolf, reading from her bold and haunting verse novel Top Doll. Hosted by Falmouth Poetry Group.

Karen McCarthy Woolf

Born in London to English and Jamaican parents, Karen McCarthy Woolf FRSL is the author of three poetry books and the editor of numerous literary anthologies, the latest of which is Nature Matters: Vital Poems of the Global Majority (Faber, 2025), co-curated with Mona Arshi. As a postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at UCLA, Karen was writer in residence at the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Her polyvocal verse novel Top Doll was shortlisted for the TS Eliot and Jhalak Prizes and she is the winner of the 2025 Jerwood Prize for Poetry, England.

Karen has performed her work worldwide – in the US, Caribbean, Asia and across Europe at venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican and King’s Place for Poetica Electronica, which showcased music collaborations with various dance and techno producers. Her poems have been translated into Turkish, Swedish, Spanish, Polish and Dutch, produced as animated and choreographed short film, exhibited by Poems on the Underground and dropped from a helicopter over the Houses of Parliament.

Karen McCarthy Woolf’s Top Doll is an experimental, polyvocal verse novel inspired by the life of reclusive American multimillionaire Huguette Clarke who died in New York age 104. Clarke was a hermit who spent her life surrounded by her vast collection of dolls. Dolls embody our desires, they live in miniature worlds that allow us to exercise complete control over a narrative that may be very different from our reality. They are passive, compliant, escapist and inert; but paradoxically intensely alive, at least in the realm of the imagination. We tell them our secrets, our dreams.

Falmouth Poetry Group

Falmouth Poetry Group was founded in 1972 by Penelope Shuttle and the late Peter Redgrove, originally meeting in Peter's room at what was then the Falmouth College of Art on Wood Lane. It meets fortnightly for critical workshops, and acts as a discussion forum for work-in-progress. We still follow the workshop method used by The Group founded by Philip Hobsbaum, of which Redgrove was a founder member. FPG id an open-door group, and acts as a dynamic and influential source of inspiration and encouragement to poets in Cornwall, and has an excellent record of achievement.

The (More Than) Human Voice - Workshop at Bill's Attic
Karen McCarthy Woolf will lead a poetry workshop at Bill’s Attic (2–4:30pm) ahead of her evening reading. Spaces are limited so early booking is essential. Hosted by Falmouth Poetry Group. WORKSHOP DETAILS TO BE FOUND HERE.