Join us at The Leeds Library for an evening of poetry with two acclaimed writers, Sean O'Brien and Lydia Kennaway. Drawing on themes of landscape, memory, history and the traces we leave behind, both poets will read from their latest books and discuss the inspirations behind their work.

Sean O’Brien: What Lies at the Back of Beyond?

Sean O’Brien follows his acclaimed twelfth poetry collection The Bonfire Party (Picador, 2026) with his new pamphlet, Back Of Beyond (Red Squirrel Press). The new poems explore taken-for-granted rituals in the back of an English beyond, including sheds, cricket, rural auctions, Guy Fawkes Night, and slow trains heading even further beyond.

Sean O’Brien’s work has received numerous awards, including the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. Recent work includes a collection of supernatural tales, The Long Glass, and Eye of the Island: Selected Poems of Corsino Fortes, translated with Daniel Hahn. He is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and FRSL.

He is delighted to be reading with his guest, Lydia Kennaway.

Lydia Kennaway: Poems for Deep Time

The Marker Committee is a limited-edition artist’s book and poetry pamphlet from Thin Ice Press in York where Lydia was Poet-in-Residence. These poems explore our compulsion to leave our mark despite the ephemerality of the written word. Lydia’s design for the book includes typographical innovation, paper-play and her own linocut illustrations. Its centrepiece, a poem about the Doves Press, is printed partly from Doves type mudlarked from the River Thames.

Lydia Kennaway’s debut pamphlet, A History of Walking (HappenStance) was launched at The Leeds Library in 2019. She has a BFA in Printmaking from Temple University, Philadelphia, and an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University. Her poems appear in eighteen anthologies and in magazines including PN Review, Strix, Stand and The Robert Graves Review.

Lydia is honoured to be reading with Sean O’Brien on this occasion.

Sean O'Brien & Lydia Kennaway: a poetry reading

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