This Wilderness: Poetry Event with Martin Kennedy Yates and R. M. Francis

Join poets, Martin Kennedy Yates and R. M. Francis for this literary event celebrating the release of Yate’s This Wilderness and Francis’s Palmer. Hear from these two innovative writers, as they explore place, language, faith and wonder through their poetry.

The University of Wolverhampton invites you to this poetry reading and in-conversation event between two Black Country poets, as they explore the ways voice, landscape and movement has helped shape their visions.

Martin Kennedy Yates was born on Merseyside and raised in the Black Country where he currently lives and works. His poems have been published in The Rialto, Stand, Magma, Poetry Wales, Butcher’s Dog, Anthropocene, The Storms, Finished Creatures, The Alchemy Spoon and elsewhere. He is the winner of The Broken Spine Chapbook Competition 2024 for his debut collection, This Wilderness and Other Concerns.

R. M. Francis is senior lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Wolverhampton. He is author of two novels, Bella and The Wrenna, two poetry collections, Subsidence and The Chain Coral Chorus, and the short story collection, Ameles / Currents of Unmindfulness. He was writer in residence at the University of Oxford and poet in residence for the Black Country Geological Society. He is reviews editor for the Journal of Class and Culture. His most recent poetry Pamphlet, Palmer, was published with V Press, exploring faith, parenthood and the divine.