Poetry at the Dusty Miller
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature EditorVisit now
Poetry at the Dusty Miller
Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.
Straight into September after the traditional summer break, Poetry at the Dusty Miller is back in the room – the Coiners’ Room in the Mytholmroyd pub.
Since its first outing in December 2023, the Calder Valley reading series has been inviting three or four guests to read each month, gathering considerable steam, welcoming the likes of Lucy Burnett and Steve Ely, Rebecca Hurst and Andrew McMillan, Kim Moore, winner of the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection, and Tom Branfoot, up for this year’s Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
The new term sees a change-round on the organising ‘committee’, with Ian Humphreys joining Carola Luther, published by Manchester’s Carcanet Press, as Judith Willson takes a step back after nearly two years. This month, Ian and Carola will be introducing a stellar line-up: Amanda Dalton, Will Harris and Joseph Minden.
Hebden Bridge-based Amanda Dalton is a poet, playwright and essayist. Her poetry collections How To Disappear, Stray and Fantastic Voyage are published by Bloodaxe Books. Poetry pamphlets include an experimental poetry ‘sketchbook’ 30 Poems In Thirty Days (Arc) and Notes on Water (smith|doorstop). For theatre and BBC Radio 4 and 3, she writes original drama, essays and adaptations. She’s a visiting lecturer at Manchester University and MMU’s Writing School, and an RLF Fellow.
Will Harris is the author of RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), both published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan in the US. He won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Siblings (a conversation with Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan and Nisha Rammaya) was published by Monitor Books in 2024, and Speakee Stonehenge (a story in prose poems about spies, care homes and Englishness) was published by Blown Rose in April 2025. He has held fellowships at the University of Manchester and at the Institute for Ideas & Imagination in Paris.
Joseph Minden is a poet and schoolteacher. His first collection, Poppy (Carcanet, 2022), was a poetry Book of the Year in The Daily Telegraph and History Today, recommended by the LRB Bookshop, and highly commended in The Forward Prizes. Other publications include Paddock calls: The Nightbook (slub press, 2022), Backlogues (Broken Sleep Books, 2023) and a pamphlet in the Earthbound Poetry Series (Earthbound Press, 2024). His new book, Answerlands, will be published by Carcanet in November.
The organisers of Poetry at the Dusty Miller say just turn up, no booking is necessary and all are welcome. The event is free, with a hat passed around at the end of the evening to contribute towards the performing poets’ travel expenses, and there will also be books for sale – so remember to bring some readies. Getting there is not too difficult, with a bus stop outside and Mytholmroyd Railway Station a five-minute walk (and regular trains from Victoria if you’re heading over from Manchester).
