City Poets at WoWFest at LEAF Liverpool

On right now is the 19th annual WoWFest, brought to Liverpool by Writing on the Wall, the city’s longest running writing and literary organisation. The festival theme of Crossing Borders is being interpreted in this one-off event at LEAF as a celebration of cities across the UK and abroad by poets Paul Farley, Khadijah Ibrahim, Stephen James Smith and our own Michael Symmons Roberts, Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of collection Mancunia.

Multi-awarding Liverpool-born writer and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s contemporary poetry programme The Echo Chamber, Paul Farley is the author of four highly acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Dark Film, which was a Poetry Book Society Choice.

Artistic director of Leeds Young Authors, literary activist and writer Khadijah Ibrahim has been hailed as one of Yorkshire’s most prolific poets by BBC Radio, and her collection Another Crossing was published by Leeds-based publishers, and one-fourth of the Northern Fiction Alliance, Peepal Tree Press in 2014. 

Based in another UNESCO City of Literature, Dublin, poet and playwright Stephen James Smith has contributed to the rise of the Irish spoken word scene, and Arlen House publish his debut collection, Fear Not, this spring, and include him in the anthology Reading The Future: New Writing From Ireland.

Find out more about Literary Places in Liverpool in our brand-new guide.