Queer Poets Reading

Sheffield poets Sarah Lasoye, Eden Chicken and Beth Davies (Sheffield Poet Laureate) in conversation about their work with Susie Wilson

Queer Poets Reading brings together three poets living in Sheffield to celebrate queer poetry in the National Year of Reading. Sarah Lasoye, Eden Chicken and Beth Davies (Sheffield Poet Laureate) will be in conversation with Susie Wilson about their work and their reading. Come join us to hear poems ranging across radical friendship, aromantic and asexual identity, non-binary re-imagining of queer ancestry, sex, love, queerness and political commitment. We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

18+ only

Poet bios:

Eden Chicken (they/them) is a queer poet whose work often explores hybridity. Having graduated from University of East Anglia’s Poetry MA, they have been published by Seedlings, Reverie, new words {press}, Ambient Receiver and more, nominated for Monarch Queer Literary Awards and shortlisted for The Free Verse Prize 2025.

Sarah Lasoye is a poet and writer from London, based in Sheffield. Her debut chapbook Fovea / Ages Ago was published by Hajar Press in 2021. She is represented by Kat Aitken at Lexington Literary, and is currently working to complete an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.

Beth Davies is the Sheffield Poet Laureate 2024-26. Her debut pamphlet, The Pretence of Understanding, was published by The Poetry Business after winning the 2022 New Poets Prize. She won second place in the 2021 Dead Cat Poetry Prize and 2022 Magdalena Young Poets’ Prize.

Susie Wilson, half poet, half tutor, half clown, is an LGBTQ+ Scottish writer living in Sheffield who has published two pamphlets, Nowhere Near As Safe As A Snake In Bed (Verve, 2024, winner of the 2024 Disabled Poets Prize) and Skin the Rabbit (The Braag, 2025). She is spending a year funded by the Arts Council writing about rivers and runs Sub Club for Sheffield Central Library and the Manchester Poetry Library.