A 90-minute writing session with award winning poet and playwright Toby Campion. All levels of experience welcome!

A special poetry writing session with award winning poet and playwright Toby Campion. Suitable for anyone, from complete beginners to experienced writers looking for fresh inspiration. All stationary provided (feel free to bring your own notebook).

This session will be led by City Lit tutor and award winning poet Toby Campion and is designed to get you writing! Forget overthinking, forget perfectionism: through a mix of reading, group discussion and curated writing exercises, you will get new poems written and hopefully make some new writing pals along the way. If you're looking for inspiration, motivation and a friendly place to start new writing, sign up today!

Join Toby Campion for a relaxed evening of reading and writing poetry at the Poetry Pharmacy London (upstairs inside the Lush store): First Floor 175-179 Oxford Street, London W1D 2JS on Wednesday 23rd September 2026 at 18:30 GMT. Spaces are limited. EARLYBIRD booking fee available.

Refunds & exchanges up to 72 hours before the event. Please note: music will be playing in the shop during the session and there will be noise from the LUSH shop - the atmosphere is more relaxed than a traditional silent writing workshop.

The Poetry Pharmacy

We have been dispensing poetry since 2011 from the back of our vintage ambulance as the Emergency Poet at festivals, conferences, hospitals and care settings, libraries and schools, with a poetry pharmacy of poems-in-pills under the attached awning. We believe that poetry can do so much to match or alter a mood, to assist in so many ways with good mental health.

verse

verse is a queer-led creative writing salon run by award winning poet and playwright Toby Campion. Verse runs 7-week writing courses (in person and online) as well as monthly Writing Socials, designed to get your writing new poems and meeting new people.

Toby Campion

Toby Campion is an award winning poet and playwright. Winner of the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2024 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2024, Toby is a former UK National Poetry Slam winner and World Poetry Slam finalist. His debut short collection, Through your blood, was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes 2018 and his poems have been published widely, most recently in The Rialto, bath magg, And Other Poems, Aesthetica and The London Magazine. Toby is the founder of the National Poetry Collectives Showcase and the Director of UniSlam. A poetry teacher at City Lit, he runs the queer writing salon, verse, and has taught for organisations including Roundhouse, Financial Times, National Trust and The Poetry Society

Description supplied by the event organiser.