The Live Poetry Book Club

Welcome to the third year of the sold out, Live Poetry Book Club, a morning summer book club exploring and celebrating live readings from global majority writers, curated and hosted by writer Rebecca Tantony.

For those who love nothing more than reading a good book (ones that move us and inspire us and allow us to see the world differently) and for those who adore listening to a writer bring their work into being through performance, at each of these unique events we will listen to the poet read their work in person, then take their collections home to enjoy afterwards.

For our third event of the season we have the incredible Dr Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett is a writer, educator and international slam champion of Jamaican heritage. His work explores Black history, religion and sexuality. As one of six initial graduates of the Spoken Word Educator programme, working as a poet-in-residence at a secondary school while completing his MA at Goldsmiths, his writing and educational work have developed alongside each other. His collection, Selah, debuted in 2017 and he has been widely anthologised across poetry, fiction and non-fiction forms. He appeared in the BAFTA-winning show Life & Rhymes, and in documentaries on Black queer history and has created short works with Amazon Prime Video and BBC Four.

Keith has judged the Foyle Young Poets Award, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and

others. He was selected for the International Literary Showcase by Val McDermid as an

outstanding LGBT writer. A Lambda Literary and Obsidian Fellow, Keith holds a PhD from

Birkbeck, where he was awarded the Bloomsbury Studentship. He currently teaches at New York University in London and is a Poetry Society trustee. Hide Me Under the Blood and I Shall Be Satisfied, his second poetry collection, was published this year and has been

longlisted for the Forward Prize; his novel is forthcoming.

And music from the amazing Eliza Shaddad

Eliza Shaddad is a Cornwall-based musician and songwriter of Scottish-Sudanese heritage. Her work centres around grunge-laden guitar riffs and raw, confessional lyricism exploring questions of identity and emotion. She is a graduate in Philosophy and Jazz, and her work has been championed by tastemakers such as Zane Lowe (Beats 1) and Lauren Laverne (BBC Radio 1) and supported by the likes of Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times, The Independent, Refinery29, and FADER.

Eliza has written with the likes of Grammy-winners Clean Bandit, toured the UK/EU with Keane, Turin Brakes, and Beth Rowley, and is a founding member of arts collective Girls Girls Girls, working to provide a safe, open space for womxn in the arts.

2021 saw the release of Shaddad's striking second album 'The Woman You Want', supported by weekly livestreams seen over 250,000 times, a full UK tour and a livestream concert which was acquired by Sky Arts. Eliza has also recently become a mother.