Rise Up! at The Bluebird Bakery York

Rise Up! is a monthly celebration of poetry featuring three invited guests, including, recently, Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo, Rosie Garland, Rachel Long and JP Seabright. Following a couple of months off over the summer months, Rise Up! returned on 24 September, welcoming to the mic Ian Duhig, Kirsten Luckens and Henry Raby (who co-runs York spoken word organisation Say Owt) – the next outing is 22 October featuring Helen Mort, Jazmine Linklater and Rachel Curzon.

Helen Mort lives in Sheffield and is Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, having joined the Department of English and Manchester Writing School as Lecturer in Creative Writing in September 2016. She has published three poetry collections, the Forward Prize-shortlisted The Illustrated Woman (2022), No Map Could Show Them (2016) and Division Street (2013) – winner of the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Prize and TS Eliot Prize – and the novel Black Car Burning (2019), all with Chatto and Windus. Her memoir A Line Above The Sky was published in 2022 and shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.

Jazmine Linklater is a poet and writer based in Manchester, where, until just recently, she worked for the independent poetry publisher Carcanet Press and is the Northwest Editor of Corridor8. Her most recent poetry publication is Figure a Motion (Guillemot Press, 2020) and, in October, she has a new book coming out with Monitor, who publish necessary, idiosyncratic writing in bespoke editions. You may have seen her perform earlier this year at the inaugural Manchester Experimental Poetry and Arts Festival in May or alongside Peter Gizzi at Wharf Chambers in Leeds.

Rachel Curzon was born in Leeds in 1978 and is now based in North Yorkshire. She received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2007, and her debut pamphlet was published in 2016 under the Faber New Poets scheme as Faber New Poets 16. Recent work has appeared in berlin lit, Magma, Propel, The Marrow and elsewhere. She is in the 2025 cohort of the Ilkley Literature Festival & Word Up North’s New Northern Poets.

The Rise space is the evening arts venue at the Bluebird Bakery (hence the name) and regularly plays host to spoken word, art exhibitions, live music, theatre, comedy, family-friendly nights and much more. Here’s what the blurb says: Rise aims to be a vibrant and independently-run creative hub, driven by love and support from the local community – and an ardent sense of adventure.

Now a regular on York’s expanding live literature scene, Rise Up! hosts and Northern Writer Award winners Nicky Kippax and Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell also offer three open mic slots to performers who’ve signed up in advance – giving emerging voices an important opportunity to share their work with a live audience. The whole event usually finishes with a signing, when you’ll have the opportunity to buy books from the readers. Tickets are £10 + Eventbrite booking fee of £1.55.