Happy new year! We hope you kept yourself busy during the Poetry in the Gallery holiday hiatus, because we are returning with a vengeance.

This month, we'll be showcasing entrants from the 2025 Emergence competition. Developing poets have been invited to submit recent work, and shortlisted entrants will be printed into a booklet that will be available at the reading. This is a great opportunity to see work by writers who have yet to publish collections and support them as they continue down their writing paths.

We'll also be bringing in an international featured reader from England - the incredible Jasmine Gardosi (more below)! This will be Jasmine's first time performing in the United States, so you do not want to miss this.

Open mic slots - as always - will be available on the door (five minutes maximum). We hope to see you there!

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Jasmine Gardosi is the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and an Honorary Doctor of Letters. They are a multiple slam champion, beatboxer, winner of the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry and winner of the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Performer 2023. Their work exploring identity, LGBTQ issues and mental health has appeared on Button Poetry, at the Tate Modern, Glastonbury Festival, Symphony Hall and BBC. They were featured on Sky Arts' BAFTA-winning show Life & Rhymes and their poem about the pandemic, filmed on a rollercoaster, was broadcast across America on PBS. They have taken their poetry across Europe, including at Romania’s Transylvania International Spoken Word Festival, and Estonia’s historical, first-ever queer poetry slam for Baltic Pride. Most recently, they were funded by West Midlands Combined Authority to perform and run workshops for the poetry and queer communities in the Philippines.

They are a previous Writer in Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Poet in Residence at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and BBC Arts Young Creative. Their poetry/beatbox/Celtic dubstep show ‘Dancing To Music You Hate’ explores gender identity and was commissioned by Warwick Arts Centre. After premiering to standing ovations, it won Best Spoken Word Show in the Saboteur Awards and its titular track was performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, broadcast on BBC Four. Following a sold-out show at Symphony Hall, the show toured the UK in the summer of 2023. Jasmine has most recently penned a new rock anthem for Birmingham, “Brummie Steel” which was performed by a mass collective of 300 musicians, commissioned by Misfits Music Foundation.

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