This will be a thrilling live experiment in shared making!
Join award-winning contemporary poets Lucy Holme, Alycia Pirmohammed and Hannah Copley, Andrew Hykel Mears and Claire Carroll, Rachel Goodman and Elvire Roberts, JLM Morton and Alice Willitts as, guided by Alun Hughes, they step into the ancient practice of Way of Council and invite you into the circle.
Expect quickfire readings, shifting seats, open questions and a room that blurs the boundary between audience and readers. For this event, audience and poets listen and share ideas, moving together in a spiral of voices that play with collaboration, challenge, and surprise.
Come ready to take part!
Held at Holy Trinity Church. 1 Trinity Rd, Stroud GL5 2HY.
Lucy Holme is a PhD student at University College Cork. She won the Southword Editor’s Award in 2025, the Cúirt New Writing Prize for Poetry in 2024 and was a finalist for The Brotherton Award and The Mairtín Crawford Award. Her debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis, (Broken Sleep Books 2022) was shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award. A nonfiction essay collection, Blue Diagonals, was published in September 2024. Her new poetry chapbook Sardines, written collaboratively with Vasiliki Albedo, has just been published by Dialect Press. She is currently working on her first novel and full poetry collection.
Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the debut poetry collection, Another Way to Split Water, which was published by Polygon (UK) and YesYes Books (US) in 2022. Her debut nonfiction book, Shorelines: Memory, migration, and the selves we become, won the Nan Shepherd Prize and is forthcoming with Canongate in 2026. Then the Lake Shifts, Alycia’s second collection of poetry, is forthcoming in 2027. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize and the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, and in 2026, she was awarded the Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship. Alycia is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and she currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s programme at the University of Cambridge.
Hannah Copley’s poetry includes Lapwing (Pavilion Poetry) shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 and Speculum (Broken Sleep Books). She was winner of the 2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize for ‘Juice’ and winner of the 2018 YorkMix/York Literature Festival Poetry Prize for ‘Haworth, 1855’. Hannah is an Editor at Stand magazine and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Westminster. Hannah collaborated with Alycia Pirmohamed on ‘Hertz,’ a DIRT publication from Dialect Press.
Andrew Hykel Mears is a poet, editor/publisher and musician based in Bristol. His work has appeared in PN Review, Poetry Birmingham, Propel, Gilded Dirt, and Berlin Lit, among others. His latest pamphlet is Rivering (Scarlett Tiger Press, 2026). He’s the founder/managing editor of Ambient Receiver, and editorial director of Bread and Roses Press. His doctoral research - Ambient Eco-Poetics: Ecological Attunement in the Posthuman Moment informs much of his writing. As a musician, he's composed for contemporary dance; performed live, improvised film soundtracks; and provided backing for Saul Williams, and Can’s Damo Suzuki. He was a founding member of the bands Youthmovies and Foals.
Claire Carroll writes about the intersection of nature, technology, and desire. She is a PhD researcher in Creative Writing at Bath Spa and Exeter Universities, where she explores how experimental writing – particularly short stories – can reimagine how humans relate to the natural and non-human world. Claire’s writing has been published in The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, The White Review, Prototype, Best of British Short Stories and others. Her debut collection of short stories, ‘The Unreliable Nature Writer’, was released in 2024 with Scratch Books. She is currently associate editor of short fiction for Ambient Receiver.
Formerly an actor and BBC presenter, Rachel Goodman moved back to her native Norfolk coast 28 years ago to raise a family and to write. In 2017 she graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing: Poetry at UEA (University of East Anglia) where she also received the Brian Heiser Memorial Scholarship. Her poems have been published in Magma, Aesthetica, Under the Radar, Finished Creatures, The Alchemy Spoon, Ink Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse Journal, Fenland Poetry Journal, Tears in the Fence. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2017 and 2021. Rachel collaborated with Elvire Roberts on Knee to Knee, shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Awards.
Elvire Roberts is a poet from the LGBTO+ community, based in Nottingham, UK. She works as an interpreter between British Sign Language and English, with a background in other languages. Elvire writes from a physiological reimagining of emotion, often through the animal, vegetable and mineral. Her poems have appeared in publications including 14 Magazine, Dark Mountain, Finished Creatures, Magma, Reliquiae, The Rialto, Tentacular and the Candlestick Press anthology Ten Poems About Getting Older. Elvire collaborated with Rachel Goodman on Knee to Knee, shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Awards.
JLM Morton’s poetry has appeared on BBC6 Music, in Poetry Review, Poetry London, Rialto, Magma, Mslexia and elsewhere. She’s won the Geoffrey Dearmer and Laurie Lee prizes and was highly commended by the Forward Prizes. Her debut collection is Red Handed (2024). Her second, Borrowed Ground, is forthcoming August 2026.
Alice Willitts is a poet and plantswoman from the Fens with a stubborn optimism about the future. She believes in putting hope into action: co-launching Bending The Arc, co-creating DIRT plantable poetry and writing. Kiss My Earth (Blue Diode) out now. www.alicewillittspoet.uk. Alice collaborates widely, including with JLM Morton and with Ilse Pedler and Hilary Watson.
Alun Hughes is a poet, non-fiction writer and wilderness guide living in Stroud. His work has been published variously by Yew Tree Press, Ambient Receiver, Amplify Stroud, Steel Jackdaw and as Salmon Paths on Substack. His debut pamphlet collection, Down the Heavens was published in 2022. An album with Lensmen, Somewhere Somewhere was also released in the same year. He is currently working on his next collection, Digeny, which focuses on the sensory experience of indigeneity and being on these islands. He is also collaborating with Sean Borodale on a collection for Dialect Press and his poetry film, Long Barrow to Cuda Falls, made its debut at this year’s NeoAncients Festival. His writing is based in nature-based practices, emergent animism and indigenous perspectives.
About DIRT
Poets Alice Willitts and JLM Morton originally teamed up to produce DIRT: plantable ecopoetry collaborations that literally go back into the earth. Following in the footsteps of artists who make work that vanishes back into the place it came from, DIRT sends exceptional poems back into the earth we’re writing about. DIRT models carbon-positive printing by using carbon-balanced methods and capturing more carbon than is used to distribute our pamphlets by sending seeds to be grown from each planted poem. Now led by editor Alice Willitts, DIRT showcases publishing practices for a thriving, life-enhancing and modern way of sharing poetry with readers. DIRT is an imprint of Dialect Press …
About Dialect Press
Dialect Press celebrates collaboration, publishing work by writers and artists working in rural and edgeland spaces. Our publications have been shortlisted for the prestigious Michael Marks Publisher Award, the East Anglian Book awards and selected as the Poetry Book Society summer pamphlet choice.
This will be a thrilling live experiment in shared making!
Join award-winning contemporary poets Lucy Holme, Alycia Pirmohammed and Hannah Copley, Andrew Hykel Mears and Claire Carroll, Rachel Goodman and Elvire Roberts, JLM Morton and Alice Willitts as, guided by Alun Hughes, they step into the ancient practice of Way of Council and invite you into the circle.
Expect quickfire readings, shifting seats, open questions and a room that blurs the boundary between audience and readers. For this event, audience and poets listen and share ideas, moving together in a spiral of voices that play with collaboration, challenge, and surprise.
Come ready to take part!
Held at Holy Trinity Church. 1 Trinity Rd, Stroud GL5 2HY.
Lucy Holme is a PhD student at University College Cork. She won the Southword Editor’s Award in 2025, the Cúirt New Writing Prize for Poetry in 2024 and was a finalist for The Brotherton Award and The Mairtín Crawford Award. Her debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis, (Broken Sleep Books 2022) was shortlisted for The Patrick Kavanagh Award. A nonfiction essay collection, Blue Diagonals, was published in September 2024. Her new poetry chapbook Sardines, written collaboratively with Vasiliki Albedo, has just been published by Dialect Press. She is currently working on her first novel and full poetry collection.
Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the debut poetry collection, Another Way to Split Water, which was published by Polygon (UK) and YesYes Books (US) in 2022. Her debut nonfiction book, Shorelines: Memory, migration, and the selves we become, won the Nan Shepherd Prize and is forthcoming with Canongate in 2026. Then the Lake Shifts, Alycia’s second collection of poetry, is forthcoming in 2027. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Pushcart Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize and the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, and in 2026, she was awarded the Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship. Alycia is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and she currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s programme at the University of Cambridge.
Hannah Copley’s poetry includes Lapwing (Pavilion Poetry) shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2024 and Speculum (Broken Sleep Books). She was winner of the 2019 Newcastle Poetry Prize for ‘Juice’ and winner of the 2018 YorkMix/York Literature Festival Poetry Prize for ‘Haworth, 1855’. Hannah is an Editor at Stand magazine and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Westminster. Hannah collaborated with Alycia Pirmohamed on ‘Hertz,’ a DIRT publication from Dialect Press.
Andrew Hykel Mears is a poet, editor/publisher and musician based in Bristol. His work has appeared in PN Review, Poetry Birmingham, Propel, Gilded Dirt, and Berlin Lit, among others. His latest pamphlet is Rivering (Scarlett Tiger Press, 2026). He’s the founder/managing editor of Ambient Receiver, and editorial director of Bread and Roses Press. His doctoral research - Ambient Eco-Poetics: Ecological Attunement in the Posthuman Moment informs much of his writing. As a musician, he's composed for contemporary dance; performed live, improvised film soundtracks; and provided backing for Saul Williams, and Can’s Damo Suzuki. He was a founding member of the bands Youthmovies and Foals.
Claire Carroll writes about the intersection of nature, technology, and desire. She is a PhD researcher in Creative Writing at Bath Spa and Exeter Universities, where she explores how experimental writing – particularly short stories – can reimagine how humans relate to the natural and non-human world. Claire’s writing has been published in The Stinging Fly, The London Magazine, The White Review, Prototype, Best of British Short Stories and others. Her debut collection of short stories, ‘The Unreliable Nature Writer’, was released in 2024 with Scratch Books. She is currently associate editor of short fiction for Ambient Receiver.
Formerly an actor and BBC presenter, Rachel Goodman moved back to her native Norfolk coast 28 years ago to raise a family and to write. In 2017 she graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing: Poetry at UEA (University of East Anglia) where she also received the Brian Heiser Memorial Scholarship. Her poems have been published in Magma, Aesthetica, Under the Radar, Finished Creatures, The Alchemy Spoon, Ink Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse Journal, Fenland Poetry Journal, Tears in the Fence. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2017 and 2021. Rachel collaborated with Elvire Roberts on Knee to Knee, shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Awards.
Elvire Roberts is a poet from the LGBTO+ community, based in Nottingham, UK. She works as an interpreter between British Sign Language and English, with a background in other languages. Elvire writes from a physiological reimagining of emotion, often through the animal, vegetable and mineral. Her poems have appeared in publications including 14 Magazine, Dark Mountain, Finished Creatures, Magma, Reliquiae, The Rialto, Tentacular and the Candlestick Press anthology Ten Poems About Getting Older. Elvire collaborated with Rachel Goodman on Knee to Knee, shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Awards.
JLM Morton’s poetry has appeared on BBC6 Music, in Poetry Review, Poetry London, Rialto, Magma, Mslexia and elsewhere. She’s won the Geoffrey Dearmer and Laurie Lee prizes and was highly commended by the Forward Prizes. Her debut collection is Red Handed (2024). Her second, Borrowed Ground, is forthcoming August 2026.
Alice Willitts is a poet and plantswoman from the Fens with a stubborn optimism about the future. She believes in putting hope into action: co-launching Bending The Arc, co-creating DIRT plantable poetry and writing. Kiss My Earth (Blue Diode) out now. www.alicewillittspoet.uk. Alice collaborates widely, including with JLM Morton and with Ilse Pedler and Hilary Watson.
Alun Hughes is a poet, non-fiction writer and wilderness guide living in Stroud. His work has been published variously by Yew Tree Press, Ambient Receiver, Amplify Stroud, Steel Jackdaw and as Salmon Paths on Substack. His debut pamphlet collection, Down the Heavens was published in 2022. An album with Lensmen, Somewhere Somewhere was also released in the same year. He is currently working on his next collection, Digeny, which focuses on the sensory experience of indigeneity and being on these islands. He is also collaborating with Sean Borodale on a collection for Dialect Press and his poetry film, Long Barrow to Cuda Falls, made its debut at this year’s NeoAncients Festival. His writing is based in nature-based practices, emergent animism and indigenous perspectives.
About DIRT
Poets Alice Willitts and JLM Morton originally teamed up to produce DIRT: plantable ecopoetry collaborations that literally go back into the earth. Following in the footsteps of artists who make work that vanishes back into the place it came from, DIRT sends exceptional poems back into the earth we’re writing about. DIRT models carbon-positive printing by using carbon-balanced methods and capturing more carbon than is used to distribute our pamphlets by sending seeds to be grown from each planted poem. Now led by editor Alice Willitts, DIRT showcases publishing practices for a thriving, life-enhancing and modern way of sharing poetry with readers. DIRT is an imprint of Dialect Press …
About Dialect Press
Dialect Press celebrates collaboration, publishing work by writers and artists working in rural and edgeland spaces. Our publications have been shortlisted for the prestigious Michael Marks Publisher Award, the East Anglian Book awards and selected as the Poetry Book Society summer pamphlet choice.
Image 1 of 13
Image 2 of 13
Image 3 of 13
Image 4 of 13
Image 5 of 13
Image 6 of 13
Image 7 of 13
Image 8 of 13
Image 9 of 13
Image 10 of 13
Image 11 of 13
Image 12 of 13
Image 13 of 13