End of year poetry celebration

Join us for a special night of poetry and celebration, hosted by Jasmine Gardosi. Watch live poetry readings from this year’s SoA Awards poets – including the judges and winners of the Cholmondeley Awards and Eric Gregory Awards.

• Catch up with the 2026 SoA Awards

This event is in conjunction with our Poetry and Spoken Word Group and is part of our 2026 SoA Awards wraparound events.

Programme

• Welcome, introductions and housekeeping from Natalie Thorpe – Co-coordinator of the Poetry and Spoken Word Group, SoA (2 mins)
• Welcome from Jasmine Gardosi (3 mins)
• Annual Poetry Collaboration hosted by Jasmine Gardosi (60 mins)
• Summary and closing comments (10 mins)
• This event will be moderated by Natalie Thorpe – Grants and Prizes Design Manager, SoA

The Line-up 

Jasmine Gardosi – Host

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 beatbox poetry, neurodivergence, LGBTQ identity and mental health has appeared on Button Poetry, at the Tate Modern, Glastonbury Festival, Symphony Hall, BBC and Sky Arts.

They have been invited to perform and run workshops around the world, and their poem about the pandemic, filmed on a rollercoaster, was broadcast across America on PBS. Their poetry/beatbox/Celtic Dubstep show about gender identity, Dancing To Music You Hate, won the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show and toured to the Philippines with the British Council.

Instagram: @jasminegardosi | Website: www.jasminegardosi.com

Jack Cooper

Jack is a poet and science communicator. His poems have been discussed on BBC Radio 4, translated into Czech and Romanian, and used in a Poetry Society educational resource. Jack has received the Society of Authors’ Eric Gregory Award twice, most recently in 2026 for his unpublished collection 16 Psyche.

Nick Makoha

Nick Makoha, PhD, is a Ugandan poet, playwright, and the founder of Obsidian Foundation and winner of the 2026 Cholmondeley Award. His collections include The New Carthaginians (Penguin Books UK, 2025), which was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and his debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity (Peepal Tree Press, 2017), which was shortlisted for the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and named one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. Dr. Makoha won the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize in 2021. His poems have appeared in The Cambridge Review, The New York Times, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly, Five Dials, Boston Review, Callaloo, Birmingham Lit Journal, and Wasafiri. Dr. Makoha is based in London.

Kim Moore

Kim Moore’s third poetry collection The House of Broken Things (Corsair, 2026) is currently shortlisted for the 2026 TS Eliot Prize.  Her second collection All the Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Accessibility 

• Attendees have the option to turn on the live captions
• If you require BSL interpretation for this event, please email events@societyofauthors.org

Booking

Book your place using the registration form below.