Barbican Young Poets: Open Works 2026

Workshops & Talks
12.10pm–2pm
Frobisher Rooms

Five spaces, nine sessions

Each space hosts two sessions (50 minutes each) with a short break in between. Workshops labelled ‘ WORKSHOP 1’ run from 12.15-1.05pm and workshops labelled ‘WORKSHOP 2’ run from 1.10-2pm. You’re welcome to stay in one space for both sessions (the pairings are designed to flow) or move between rooms to build your own path through the afternoon.

Space 1: The body as instrument
Frobisher Room 1 & 2 

12.10-1pm
WORKSHOP 1:  Resonant…Bodies
Freya Shi & Tajiyah Sulwana

Poetry through voice, movement, and collective sound-making. Drawing on somatic practice, Dalcroze-inspired rhythmic movement, and call-and-response singing, you’ll experiment with breath, rhythm, and vocal texture to create sound poetry together. Come ready to move.

1.10-2pm
WORKSHOP 2:  Embodying the Word
Jess Senanayake

A workshop for poets looking to bring their bodies into their writing practice. Through mindful movement and group and individual writing exercises, you’ll explore how the body moves, how this shapes what you write, and how to harness it as a tool in your kit. Wear comfortable clothing.

If you do both: a continuous thread from collective sound into individual embodiment. Making sound together, then finding your own voice through the body.

Space 2: Attention and making 
Frobisher Room 3

12.10-1pm 
WORKSHOP 1: Slippery Objectivity: meditations on microscopy
Leon Ray-Fernandes & Marianne Habeshaw  

What happens when you slow your breath and really attend to what’s around you, and within you? Through guided looking, discussion, and short writing exercises, this session explores how the details we notice shape the meaning we make. How much really depends on a red wheelbarrow?

1.10-2pm
WORKSHOP 2: The Forge
Edward Adonteng

An open writing lab. Bring your drafts, your half-ideas, your fragments. The Forge is a space for making, refining, and finding a second eye. All you need is a pen, a phone, or a laptop. Let’s forge.

If you do both: slow attention sharpens the eye; the Forge gives you somewhere to further explore what you’ve observed. 

Space 3: Beyond the poem
Frobisher Room 4

12.10-1pm 
WORKSHOP 1: The Poetics of Loose Ends: Poetry and Archiving
Taylor Beidler  

An interactive talk drawing on Taylor’s work as a poetry archivist and her PhD research into archives as tools of storytelling. You’ll look at long-form archival projects, narrative gaps, and missing links, then try your hand at building something from what’s left behind. 

1.10-2pm
WORKSHOP 2: Surviving on the Strange: Exploring the Absurd in Caribbean Writing
Johanna Gibson  

A workshop exploring the absurd in Caribbean writing: not as escapism, but as something rooted in lived reality. Through poetry, folklore, and discussion, you’ll examine how the supernatural, violence, and the everyday can occupy the same terrain on the page. 

If you do both: two ways of looking at what surrounds a poem. The archive it emerges from, and the world it tries to hold. 

Space 4: Language at play
Frobisher Room 5 

12.10-1pm 
WORKSHOP 1: Writing Across Orthogonal Worlds
Nat Norland

Can a poem contain multiple worlds? Not parallel, but at right angles to each other? This workshop explores techniques to interleave and interweave different realities within a single text. Exercises in overlap, collision, and coexistence. 

1.10-2pm
WORKSHOP 2: Ratio'd and Rhymed: Poetry for the Chronically Online
Conan Tan

The zeitgeist is shifting, and language with it. In this generative workshop, you’ll look at poetry as a playful, shape-shifting venture that captures the current pop-cultural landscape: brainrot, aura farming, rizz, and all. Bring your sense of humour. 

If you do both: two different ways of bending language. Nat through form and structure, Conan through the living vocabulary of the internet. 

Space 5: A room of its own
Frobisher Room 6

12.10-1pm 
WORKSHOP 1: NUNC STANS: memory in abiding time
Mariem Elhelali

A journey through, but not across, time. Why do we think of time as one continuous linear thing, with no returns or exchanges? What happens if we think about it as fluid, circular, the past and the future each an infinite present? Memory, self, love, and the spiritual world are each transformed.

Finding your own path 

You don’t have to stay in one room. Here are some threads to follow if you want to move between spaces: 

• If you’re drawn to the body and the senses: Start with Resonant…Bodies (Space 1), then cross to Slippery Objectivity (Space 2). From making sound with your whole body to attending closely with your whole attention. 
• If you want to write: Start with Orthogonal Worlds (Space 4) or Embodying the Word (Space 1) for a generative kick, then bring your drafts to The Forge (Space 2) in Workshop 2. 
• If you’re thinking about poetry’s wider contexts: Poetics of Loose Ends (Space 3) into NUNC STANS (Space 5). Archives and time, what we keep and how we remember. 
• If you want to play: Aura Farming (Space 4) is the one. Or start with Resonant…Bodies (Space 1) and let the afternoon build from there.