Two Poets, MK LitFest 2020

Sophia Blackwell and John McCullough: Two Contemporary Poets

Zoom online event, Wednesday 30 September 2020, 7.30pm, Free

Visit the MKLitFest website for further details on how to book.

This event is free to attend, but donations to our costs would be very welcome. Click here to donate online.

The Event
For MK Lit Fest’s first Zoom-based event, we are delighted to welcome two of the UK’s finest young poets, Sophia Blackwell and John McCullough. The event will include opportunities to ask your own questions, and we’d encourage you to read their latest respective collections before joining us.

Sophia Blackwell is a performance poet and author of three collections of poetry and a novel. Her latest poetry collection, The Other Woman (click to order), was longlisted for the Polari Prize. She hosts and produces the LGBT+ radio show Out in South London on Resonance FM and is Chair of Poetry London magazine. Her poetry has been published by Bloodaxe, Nine Arches and The Emma Press among others.

Sophia has performed four times as a featured artist on the Poetry & Words Stage at Glastonbury, several times at the Edinburgh Fringe and as part of WOW (Women of the World) festival at the South Bank Centre.

John McCullough lives in Hove. His latest book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins: click here to order) won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.

The Costa judges said “This collection – hilarious, harrowing and hyper-modern – offers a startlingly fresh insight into vulnerability and suffering.” In the Times Literary Supplement, head judge for the Hawthornden, Christopher Reid, described it as “a rare literary phenomenon … a frank and militant declaration of joy.”

John has won other awards, including the Polari First Book Prize, and his collections have been named Books of the Year in The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer as well as his work often appearing in magazines such as Poetry London, Poetry Review and The New Statesman. He teaches creative writing at the University of Brighton and New Writing South.