Disabled Poets Prize 2025 winners announcement

Deptford Literature Festival

Find out who's won the Disabled Poets Prize 2025, followed by readings from the winning and placed poets in each category.

Join us online with Jamie Hale, founder and judge of the Disabled Poets Prize and fellow judges Polly Atkin and Khairani Barokka for the announcement of the winners and shortlisted poets of this year’s Prize. Polly will be introducing the Best Single Poem awards and Khairani the Best Unpublished Pamphlet; followed by readings from the winning and placed poets in each category.The Prize is supported by the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society and the partners are CRIPtic Arts, Spread the Word, Verve Poetry Press, The Literary Consultancy and Arvon Foundation.About the ArtistsJamie Hale is an award-winning poet and facilitator, founder of CRIPtic Arts, and one of the 10 most influential disabled people in the arts (Shaw Trust, 2022-24). Their work explores themes of nature, body and mortality through a 'crip' lens, embedding disability in form and content. They were a Jerwood Poetry Fellow 2021-22, their pamphlet, Shield, was published by Verve Press, and their award-winning show, NOT DYING / Quality of Life is Not a Measurable Outcome has been performed and screened worldwide.Khairani Barokka is a writer, artist, translator and editor from Jakarta, based in London. Okka’s work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, environmental justice, and access as translation. She regularly teaches, mentors, judges, and consults for arts organisations, and has a PhD by Practice in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London. Among her honours, she has been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, a Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, an Artforum Must-See, and Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing. She was the first Poet-in-Residence at Modern Poetry in Translation, and later became the magazine’s first non-British Editor. In 2023, Okka was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in the Arts and Culture Category.Her books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, as co-editor), Rope (Nine Arches), Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and 2024’s amuk (Nine Arches). Her speculative nonfiction debut, Annah, Infinite, is a translation of a painting, forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press in June 2025.Polly Atkin (FRSL) is a poet and nonfiction writer. She grew up in Nottingham and lived in East London for seven years before moving north to Cumbria. She has published three poetry pamphlets and two collections – Basic Nest Architecture (Seren: 2017) and Much With Body (Seren: 2021), a PBS Winter 2021 recommendation and Laurel Prize 2022 longlistee. Her nonfiction includes Recovering Dorothy: The Hidden Life of Dorothy Wordsworth (Saraband: 2021), a Barbellion-longlisted biography of Dorothy’s later life and illness; and a memoir exploring place, belonging and disability, Some Of Us Just Fall: On Nature and Not Getting Better (Sceptre: 2023), a longlistee of the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2024, and Lakeland Book of the Year 2024. Her third nonfiction book is a love song to the owls of Lakeland, The Company of Owls (Elliott and Thompson: 2024). Her work is included in various anthologies, including Moving Mountains (Footnote: 2023).She works as a freelancer from her home in the English Lake District. In 2023 she and her partner took ownership of historic Grasmere bookshop Sam Read Bookseller.Access information:This stream will be captioned and have BSL intrerpretation.For more information about the access provision available, please visit: <a href="https://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/access-at-deptford-literature-festival/" title="https://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/access-at-deptford-literature-festival/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">spreadtheword.org.uk/access-at-deptford-literature-festival</a>Free ticketsThis event is free to you. As far as possible, by booking a place we ask that you commit to attending, as places for in-person events and online workshops are limited. If you can no longer attend, please cancel your ticket so someone else can come along. There are instructions on how to do that <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/help/en-gb/articles/575010/how-to-cancel-your-free-registration/" title="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/help/en-gb/articles/575010/how-to-cancel-your-free-registration/">here</a>.If you would like to support the future of Deptford Literature Festival, run by charity Spread the Word, you can donate<a href="http://totalgiving.co.uk/appeal/deptfordlitfest" title="http://totalgiving.co.uk/appeal/deptfordlitfest" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"> here</a>.About Deptford Literature FestivalDeptford Literature Festival takes place each March and celebrates the diversity and creativity of Deptford and Lewisham through words, stories and performance. It is run by Spread the Word in a collaboration with independent producer Tom MacAndrew, and funded by Arts Council England, with support from The Albany, Deptford Lounge and Lewisham Libraries. You can find out more about Deptford Literature Festival at: <a href="http://www.deptfordlitfest.com" title="http://www.deptfordlitfest.com" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">deptfordlitfest.com</a>Image description for the header image: The title Deptford Literature Festival in chunky black lettering outlined in bright yellow, sits on a background in blue and pale blue. It’s an illustration that includes an image of a hand with a pen, a closed fist, and the words ‘whose stories are told?’, ‘resistance’, ‘community’, and ‘history’.