This workshop with Victoria Adukwei Bulley explores the ways that the female or feminine body is positioned in contexts of the divine, religious, and the spiritual through the poems of Sarah Ghazal Ali’s critically acclaimed debut, Theophanies.

6 - 8pm GMT, 1 - 3pm EST, 10 - 12 PST

Join Karenjit Sandhu and special guests to celebrate the Panchayat Collection and the launch of gestalt at Tate Britain. Sandhu will perform from gestalt, accompanied by a soundscape composed by Christopher Sarantis. Guest poets Azad Ashim Sharma, Bhanu Kapil, Iain Morrison and Redell Olsen

Join for the Bristol launch of Gabrielle Bates’ debut poetry collection Judas Goat. With support from author Emma Gomis.

Join for the Scottish launch of Gabrielle Bates' debut poetry collection, Judas Goat. The conversation will be chaired by Jessica Widner.

Join the87press for a special Mushaira featuring the launches of Autobiography of a Performance by Blue Pieta/Bhanu Kapil, with a performance featuring vocalist/musician Kath Gifford, Judas Goat by Gabrielle Bates, and The Nightmare Sequence by Omar Sakr, illustrated by Safdar Ahmed (virtual reading). The evening will also feature guest readings from poets Hannah Copley and Isabelle Baafi.

Join the87press for a very special Hummingbirds event featuring Alia Al Ghussain and Rayya El Zein to celebrate the launch of Filling the Head: Listening to Rap in Arabic (Indiana University Press, 2025) at Housmans Bookshop in Kings Cross.

How do we write in relation to our histories – our inheritances? And how do we write in relation to one another in the ever-changing contexts of our world(s)? In this workshop, we will read poetry that explores these entanglements, thinking about collectivity, shifting personal and political narratives, and how we consciously or unconsciously write toward/to another. This workshop will incorporate hybrid, cross-genre works; docu-poetics; and poetry with intertextual elements. In the session, there will be time for close reading, discussion, and writing exercises. The title of this workshop was inspired by Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation and Susan Briante’s Defacing the Monument.

We’ll be joined by four phenomenal poets: Sarah Ghazal Ali, Saba Keramati, Susan Nguyen, and Rushika Wick. DJs Jimmy Two Shoes and Dr Aditi will carry us into the night with sweet tunes, while Chef Yogi sells delicious Sri Lankan food throughout the evening.

How do we write in relation to our histories – our inheritances? And how do we write in relation to one another in the ever-changing contexts of our world(s)? In this workshop, we will read poetry that explores these entanglements, thinking about collectivity, shifting personal and political narratives, and how we consciously or unconsciously write toward/to another. This workshop will incorporate hybrid, cross-genre works; docu-poetics; and poetry with intertextual elements. In the session, there will be time for close reading, discussion, and writing exercises. The title of this workshop was inspired by Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation and Susan Briante’s Defacing the Monument.

“Somewhere beneath this poem,” writes Victoria Adukwei Bulley, “is the one you sat down to write.” What lives in the space between said and unsaid? How do our inherited narratives and embodied truths unfold in many kinds of quiet on the page?

In this workshop, we will look at poems from Bulley’s transformative debut collection Quiet to think about quiet as technique, quiet as form, and quiet as the body’s logbook. The session will include close reading, discussion, and writing exercises.

Join us for an unforgettable evening of poetry, performance, and music, curated by the87press. This February, we’re celebrating three exciting titles coming up later in the year: Recupera by Emma Gomis, gestalt by Karenjit Sandhu, and MAAFA by Harmony Holiday.

Where do we end and where does the world begin? How are our beings marked and complicated by their inherited histories? In this workshop inspired by poems from Alycia Pirmohamed’s collection How To Split Water, participants will experiment with writing that seeks to dissolve the borders between self and other, land and body, matter and spirit, reaching across forms towards a more numinous, transcendent kinship.

We will welcome Waithera Sebatindira and Azad Ashim Sharma who will read from their recent works, Through an Addict's Looking Glass (Hajar Press, 2023) and Boiled Owls (Out Spoken Press, 2024). Both these texts work their way through the throes and trials of addiction and contend with the promises of recovery.

Welcome back to MUSHAIRA, an evening of poetry, performance, and music curated by the87press. Join us this November for an exciting lineup celebrating the launch of four new titles: The Pharmacy by Kat Sinclair, OSSIA by Jimin Seo, Son of Sin by Omar Sakr, and The Voice of Sheila Chandra by Kazim Ali. We’re thrilled that all four authors are able to join us in London to read from their latest works! Each author will read for 20 minutes.

In this workshop, we will explore archival poetics and consider archives – and archival spaces – as both theme and source. What are the politics that underlie what is deemed important enough for ‘permanent’ preservation? What materials might purposely evade personal and public archives? We will engage with the practice of docupoetry, read material related to archival reclamation and resistance, and consider how our own mediums and writing processes simultaneously memorialise and erase. The session will include close reading, discussion, and writing exercises. A list of pre-reading materials including poetry and longer works will be shared with participants in advance. Note: the title of this session borrows from works by Bhanu Kapil and Sarah Howe.

What is refusal? What terms of the world might refusal seek to reject, and what does it demand of us as writers and readers? Spending time with poems from Fady Joudah’s recent collection […] (Out-Spoken Press, 2024) alongside Lola Olufemi’s text 'Notes on Refusal', participants of this workshop will experiment with techniques including acts of (un)naming, (re)definition, blackout and redaction as a means of understanding how refusal works as a poetics on the page, as well as how such writing calls beyond itself towards social action.

Join us on October 5th at Cafe OTO to celebrate the launch of The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974-1989 and WILDPLASSEN!

Hummingbirds 3.0 brings together two writers from the Punjabi diaspora, Karenjit Sandhu and Kiran Bath, reading and in conversation.

When do we sense a departure or an arrival? In this workshop, we will spend time thinking about thresholds, boundaries, and borders.

This workshop will explore how Cesaire and Mehri blend surrealism, humor, and critique to envision kinship beyond colonial legacies.

Hummingbirds 2.0 features Edgar Garcia, John Wilkinson, and Calliope Michail; discussion will be chaired by Azad Ashim Sharma. Each salon event offers an intimate space for live poetry readings and discussion.

This workshop will explore how to write poems that speak with the errant strangeness of our innermost beings.

Kashif Sharma-Patel will be launching in-person their debut collection furnish, entrap (Broken Sleep Books), and will be reading alongside Sabeen Chaudhry, whose Rimming the Event Horizon came out last year from the87press. After the reading they will both be engaged in conversation by Azad Ashim Sharma touching on themes of South Asian experimentalism, the provisionality of identity and late coloniality.

Mishti will provide compositional soundscapes during the event in keeping with the mood of innovative aesthetics and Asian experimentation.

Please join us for New Days, an online poetry reading by the87press. We will be joined by Vahni (Anthony) Capildeo, Tim Tim Cheng, Mantra Mukim and Ali Graham who will treat us to a veritable feast of new poetry for these spring days.

In this workshop, we will look at the rich metaphoric potential of water and explore the themes it comes to represent in poetry.

We are launching 5 new poetry collections at Cafe OTO!