Booking fees
£1.50 booking fee per online/phone transaction.
No fee when tickets are booked in person.
Booking fees are per transaction and not per ticket. If your booking contains several events the highest booking fee will apply. The booking fee may be reduced on certain events. Members do not pay booking fees.
Thursday's Programme
Thursday's Programme
Opening Event, 7.15pm–8.15pm
Join curators Chris McCabe and Sam Winston, along with special guest poet Raymond Antrobus, at this celebratory event to mark the start of the festival.
They'll provide an introduction to the festival, the first of its kind to ever take place in the UK.
The Art of Language: Panel Discussion, 8.30pm–9.30pm
With half of the world’s languages threatened to fall silent by the end of the century, join us for a conversation from speakers of these languages who are activating new audiences through their art and work.
Can poetry and art activate new speakers in a language? What is the link between the words we use and the landscape we live in? How are indigenous speakers seeing the future of their languages? Does nature itself speak its own language and how can we hear it?
Panel speakers include: Mandana Seyfeddinipur, the Director of the Endangered Languages Archive, Tim Brookes, the author of An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets, and award-winning poet Raymond Antrobus. The event is hosted by Bidisha.
Ticketing
Thursday Ticket: £15
Gives you access to all of Thursday's events.
3-Day Ticket: £40
Gives you access to all events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Friday's Programme
Friday's Programme
Global Poems for Home, 7.15pm–8.15pm
Don't miss the chance to hear newly commissioned poems in endangered languages with links to five continents. These brand new poems explore what 'home' means around the world and how language shapes our relationship with place.
Come along to hear live performances from Belarusian poet Hanna Komar, London-based Filipino poet Troy Cabida and the National Poet of Wales, Hanan Issa. Hear audio files created specially for the evening by Canadian Inuktitut writer Norma Dunning and Amajagh poet and painter, Hawad, who writes in the Tamajaght language.
The poems will be performed in their original languages and in English. Following the performances, the poets will join together for a conversation about their work as a form of activism alongside festival co-curator and artist Sam Winston who has created five Seed Syllable flags in collaboration with each poet. The event is hosted by journalist Bidisha.
Without an Army and a Navy: Celebrating Dialect Poetry, 8.30pm–9pm
Join us for a live extravaganza of dialect poetry.
A decade ago, a report stated that UK dialects will become obsolete in 50 years, but all around us we hear local languages dynamically evolving. ‘A language is a dialect with an army and a navy’ is a quote popularised by Max Weinreich that highlights how majority languages are often given privilege due to power and resources. For this reason, linguists increasingly talk of dialects as ‘language varieties’. No more so than in poetry, where language varieties provide material for some of the most exciting work being created today.
Come along to hear poems in Black Country dialect from Forward Prize-winning poet Liz Berry, poetry in Scouse from Chris McCabe and poems in Sylheti from the winner of a Bangladesh national literary award, Bangladeshi-British bilingual poet Shamim Azad. Hosted by journalist Bidisha.
Ticketing
Friday Ticket: £15
Gives you access to all of Friday's events.
3-Day Ticket: £40
Gives you access to all events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Saturday Afternoon's Programme
Saturday Afternoon's Programme
Yiddish Poetry of the East End, 3pm–4pm
The East End of London contains more than 90 languages including the once widely-spoken Jewish minority language of Yiddish. A language of poetry, as well as everyday communication, this event explores the hidden life and work of the legendary East End Yiddish-language poet, A.Stencl (1897-1983).
Rachel Lichtenstein, author of Brick Lane and Estuary, will discuss her grandparents' friendship with Stencl, which has inspired Lichtenstein to write a book about the figure, The Prince of Whitechapel (William Collins, 2026) and learn Yiddish, a journey that she will share at this event.
Lichtenstein will be joined by poet Stephen Watts, who has lived in the east end for 50 years and who saw Stencl in the cafes & on the pavements of Whitechapel. Stephen will perform from his own work and Stencl’s, including co-translations made for the All My Young Years publication, before joining Lichtenstein in conversation. Hosted by Bidisha.
Say Again: The Poetry of Invented Languages, 4.15pm–5.15pm
Hear from poets who go beyond the confines of their mother tongues to create poems in languages that communicate before they are understood.
Poet Stephen Watts presents poems that contain echoes of other languages including Scottish, Gaelic and Italian. While montenegrofisher, a duo of artists and poets based in London, present a soundscape poetry performance, moving between field recordings and rhythms to explore invented language, ritual, transformation, politics and poetics. We'll also hear poetry in Polari, a UK language invented amongst the queer subculture as a form of resistance, which is now experience a renewed interest among today's queer communities. Hosted by Bidisha
Ticketing
Saturday Afternoon Ticket: £15
Gives you access to both Saturday afternoon events.
3-Day Ticket: £40
Gives you access to all events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Saturday Evening's Programme
Saturday Evening's Programme
Language as Political Act, 6pm–7pm
Hear poets reading their work in their mother tongues and discussing how their language provides a home as well as offering a form of resistance. Hear how languages of millions of speakers can become endangered due to political and social pressure.
Speakers include: Palestinian poet and translator Batool Abu Akleen who will join the event via screen with her translator Cristina Vita live in the venue. Batool started writing at the age of ten, and at the age of fifteen, she won the Barjeel Poetry Prize for her poem ‘It Wasn’t Me Who Stole the Cloud’. This event is hosted by Journalist Bidisha.
Open Mix, 7.15pm–9pm
Whether you took part in a workshop as part of the festival or would simply love to share work of your own, make the most of this time to perform on stage in front of an audience.
Bring poems written in your mother tongue, experiment writing in different languages or why not create an entirely new language of your own? Come along to hear performances from speakers with any of the hundreds of languages spoken across the UK and the world at their fingertips and celebrate how all of them bring something different to written and visual forms of poetry. Hosted by Bidisha.
To sign up as a performer or reader, fill out the form you will receive after booking your ticket. Reading slots are limited and can't be guaranteed, so sign up early.
For those not wishing to perform this event will be rare a opportunity to hear poetry in many languages performed in one space.
Ticketing
Saturday Evening Ticket: £15
Gives you access to both of Saturday evening events.
3-Day Ticket: £40
Gives you access to all events on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The Pit
Location
The Pit is located on Level -2 within the main Barbican building and can be accessed via the stairs or lifts on Level G, next to the doors to the Lakeside Terrace.
Address
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DS
Public transport
The Barbican is widely accessible by bus, tube, train and by foot or bicycle. Plan your journey and find more route information in ‘Your Visit’ or book your car parking space in advance.
