We close out the London Library Lit Fest with a party of poetry featuring leading lights of poetry collective Malika's Poetry Kitchen.
This event is available to view as a recording until 13 June. Tickets can be purchased below.
‘We knew that black and brown bodies, working class voices, women’s voices, did not have a space where they could be heard – and so this writing collective was a necessary and political act.’
In the early years of the new millennium, poets Malika Booker and Roger Robinson saw the need for a space for writers outside of the establishment to grow, improve, discuss and learn. One Friday night, Malika offered her Brixton kitchen table as a meeting place. And so, Malika’s Poetry Kitchen was born.
‘Kitchen’, as it became known, is now a thriving writers’ collective, which has ushered in a new generation of voices, launching some of the most exciting writers, books and initiatives in British poetry in the past twenty years.
Celebrating 20 years of MPK, and their forthcoming anthology Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different, we close out The London Library Lit Fest with a party of poetry featuring MPK members past and present including Inua Ellams, Malika Booker, Kayo Chingonyi, Zakia Carpenter-Hall, Arji Manuelpillai, Charlotte Ansell and hosted by poet and MPK Director Jill Abram.
In partnership with Malika’s Poetry Kitchen
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Jill Abram has been Director of Malika’s Kitchen since 2010. Her poems have been published in multiple publications and she has performed her poems in London, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Paris and USA. She created and curates the Stablemates reading series.
Charlotte Ansell‘s third poetry collection Deluge was a 2019 PBS winter recommendation. She is the recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Award 2020 for a project enabling adopted young people to explore their experience via creative writing workshops.
Malika Booker is a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian parentage. Her collection Pepper Seed was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for first full collection. ‘The Little Miracles’ won the 2020 Forward Prize for best single poem.
Zakia Carpenter-Hall is a writer, tutor and critic. She was an inaugural winner of Poetry London's mentoring scheme and she is currently on The London Library Emerging Writers Programme. Her chapbook Event Horizon was published by Sampson Low.
Kayo Chingonyi’s first full-length collection, Kumukanda, was published in won the Dylan Thomas Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. He is poetry editor for The White Review. He is also an emcee, producer, and DJ and regularly collaborates with musicians and composers.
Inua Ellams is a Nigerian-born poet, playwright, performer, graphic artist and designer. He has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the BBC. The Actual, his fifth poetry release, and first full collection was published in 2020 by Penned in the Margins.
Arji Manuelpillai is a poet, performer and creative facilitator. He has also been shortlisted for the 2019 Oxford Brookes Prize, The BAME Burning Eye pamphlet prize 2018, The Robert Graves Prize 2018, and The Live Canon Prize 2017. His debut pamphlet Mutton Rolls and is published with Outspoken Press.
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Tickets
Tickets cost £5 or buy a £25 Festival Pass for access to all festival event recordings.
If you have a Festival Pass code or discount code please enter it in the ‘promo code’ area below and press ‘apply’ and you will see your hidden discounts.
Your link will be sent to you via Eventbrite. If you do not receive it, please check your junk file or email litfest@londonlibrary.co.uk. Please note the event starts with a slide show listing the festival events which lasts approx. 1 minute.
Transcription for this event will be available soon.
Ticket holders will receive a 10% discount to buy all festival books from Hatchards until 13 June with their ticket.