Derby Poetry Festival Headline Event: Terrance Hayes, Rachel Long and Raymond Antrobus

Derby Poetry Festival presents Terrance Hayes with Rachel Long and Raymond Antrobus

Internationally renowned poet, Terrance Hayes, will be travelling across seas for his first performance on UK soil in years. Joining him will be the brilliant Rachel Long and Raymond Antrobus. Our headline event will truly be a night to remember!

About Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections: So to Speak; American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and TS Eliot Prize; How to Be Drawn; Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; Muscular Music, recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; Hip Logic, winner of the 2001 National Poetry Series, and Wind in a Box. His prose collection, To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. Hayes has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Whiting Foundation, and is a professor of English at New York University.

About Raymond Antrobus

Raymond Antrobus MBE FRSL was born in London to an English mother and Jamaican father. He’s a Cave Canem Graduate and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. He is the author of To Sweeten Bitter (UK, Out-Spoken Press), The Perseverance (UK, Penned In The Margins / US, Tin House) and All The Names Given (US, Tin House / UK, Picador) as well as children’s picture books Can Bears Ski? (UK, Walker Books / US, Candlewick). He is the 2019 recipient of the Ted Hughes Award as well as the Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award, and became the first poet to be awarded the Rathbone Folio Prize. His first full-length collection, The Perseverance was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and The Forward Prize, All The Names Given was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize and the Costa Award. Also in 2021 his poems ‘The Perseverance’ and ‘Happy Birthday Moon’ were added to the UK’s Oxford, Cambridge and RSA ‘GCSE’ syllabus. His next poetry collection, Signs, Music, is out in September 2024 with Picador and Tin House

About Rachel Long

Rachel Long’s debut collection, My Darling from the Lions (Picador 2020 / Tin House 2021) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Costa Book Award, The Rathbones Folio Prize, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The US edition of My Darling from the Lions was a New York Times Book Review, and named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME.

About Derby Poetry Festival

Often referred to as DPF, Derby Poetry Festival is a four-day poetry and literature festival held in the centre of Derby. DPF are dedicated to developing new writing talent in Derby and bringing excellent work to the city. DPF has just entered its fifth year, and 2023 is set to be bigger and better than ever.

DPF work with local, national and international talent to build a community of like-minded individuals to create a wonderful literary festival.

Check Out the rest of the Festival Programme here.

Derby Poetry Festival is funded by Arts Council England, Derby City Council & Cathedral Quarter Derby

Suitable for adults, booking essential.

Accessibility at Derby Museums