National Poetry Day with Caroline Bird — Litfest Autumn Weekend Launch
To celebrate National Poetry Day, we invite you to explore and respond to this year’s theme of ‘refuge’, thinking about mental health and peace of mind as well as about the actual experience of seeking security as a refugee fleeing from a country that is no longer safe, or a family escaping extreme weather. Tell us what sanctuary means to you and imagine what it might mean if suddenly, as the Somali British poet Warsan Shire imagines at the beginning of her poem ‘Home’, you had to leave:
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
In the days leading up to National Poetry Day, Caroline Bird will curate a selection of 12–15 outstanding poems from those submitted to the Litfest ‘Refuge’ Poetry Mosaic by the deadline of midnight on 28 September. Then on Monday 2 October Litfest will contact those poets to invite them to read their work in person or online at this special event!
The event itself will feature Caroline’s own poetry, poems from the past and present by other poets, together with the selected poets’ work.
Submissions to the poetry mosaic open 1 September.
Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. Her sixth collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Costa Prize. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. As a playwright, Bird has been shortlisted for the George Devine Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Rookie, her Selected Poems was published in May 2022.
