A dynamic night of live poetry and music, showcasing exciting acts from Notts, the UK and beyond in a warm, inclusive setting. BSL signed.

“Fierce and bristling with life” – The Guardian

“The very best of contemporary poetry” – The Book Hive

Award-winning publishing house Bad Betty Press presents poetry and music.

Featuring poetry from Sarah Howe, Khairani Barokka, Perla Kantarjian, Aoife O'Connor, Nippa Uddin and music from Tony D.

Hosted by Bridie Squires and Jake Wild Hall.

BSL interpreted by Steph Lehrle. A digital transcript of poems and lyrics will be available to download at the start of the event.

Supported by Arts Council England.

Book a ticket for just the show, or combine it with a workshop ticket to save on both. Combined tickets also give you access to Karen Mccarthy Woolf's masterclass.

VENUE & ACCESS:

This event is part of NAE's Friday Night Socials. It takes place in the Performance Space of New Art Exchange, on the first floor. NAE has a lift and accessible toilets. The building is fitted with induction loops for enhanced sound. Disabled parking is available on request. Full accessibility info here.

New Art Exchange (NAE) is the UK’s largest gallery dedicated to contemporary visual arts from the Global Ethnic Majority. Based in Hyson Green, Nottingham, NAE champions inclusivity and equity in the creative industries, nurturing and celebrating talent from diverse backgrounds About Us page on our website.

ABOUT THE ACTS

KAREN MCCARTHY WOOLF

Sarah Howe is a Hong Kong-born British poet and editor. Her first collection of poems, Loop of Jade (2015), won the T.S. Eliot Prize and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Her second collection, Foretokens (2025), is a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Khairani Barokka

Khairani Barokka (b. 1985) is a writer, artist, arts consultant, translator and editor from Jakarta. Okka’s work has been presented widely internationally, in dozens of countries, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, environmental justice, and access as translation. She regularly lectures, judges, mentors, and consults for arts organisations, and has a PhD by Practice in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, on an LPDP Scholarship, and a Masters from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she was a Departmental Fellow and Scholar. Among her honours, she has been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, Emerging Writers Festival’s Inaugural Writer-in-Residence, a Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, an Artforum Must-See, and the first non-British Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing.

She was the first Poet-in-Residence at Modern Poetry in Translation, later co-edited their Body Issue, and eventually became the magazine’s first non-British Editor. Barokka’s work has appeared in GRANTA, Poetry Review, The Rialto, Ambit, Magma, Wasafiri, Stand, The New Inquiry, Asymptote, and many other publications, and she has also co-edited Massachusetts Review’s Disability Justice Issue. In 2023, Okka was longlisted for the Loewe/Studio Voltaire Arts Award, and shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in the Arts and Culture Category.

Her commissions have included the ICA, Wellcome Collection, Jakarta Biennale, Southbank Centre, and Serpentine Galleries. She has also been featured widely in national and international media, including on BBC Radio 2's The Arts Show, BBC’s The Cultural Frontline, ABC Australia, The Hindu, The Times of India, and all major Indonesian newspapers and media.

Her books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, as co-editor), Rope (Nine Arches), Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and 2024’s amuk (Nine Arches), currently longlisted for the 2025 Jhalak Prize. Her speculative nonfiction debut Annah, Infinite (Tilted Axis Press, 2025) is out now, and is an Expert Pick in The Bookseller.

PERLA KANTARJIAN

Perla Kantarjian is a Lebanese-Armenian writer with recent work in Mizna, Electric Literature, Wasafiri, The Rumpus, and Black Warrior Review. Longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Kantarjian is Pushcart Prize nominated and has garnered recognition from the Southbank Centre, The Poetry Society, Palette Poetry, and more. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was selected as Sonny Mehta Scholar. Her debut poetry collection, You Must Become Field, is forthcoming from Bad Betty Press in 2026.

AOIDE O'CONNOR

Aoife O'Connor (she/they) is a poet and producer; they founded She Speaks, are a co-director of the Derby Poetry Festival, and are a vice-chair of Forward Arts Foundation board of trustee's. They were a member of the inaugural Southbank New Poets Collective in 2021/22. They won the 2023 Aurora Prize for Poetry and were shortlisted for the 2025 Bridport Prize. They're

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