'Go to the poets, they will speak to thee': Erica Hesketh

Curated and hosted by poet Kim Moore, this online contemporary poetry reading series continues throughout 2025. Listen to what poets have to say about our turbulent times, and how poetry can cross borders to challenge, delight and inspire. Each event in the series is part reading, part open mic.

This event will feature the brilliant poet and editor Erica Hesketh. Erica will be reading from her debut poetry collection In the Lily Room (Nine Arches, 2025). Erica’s poems excavate the transformational journey of early motherhood, in lyrical, image-drenched poems that never fail to find the wonder in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary. This focus on the ordinary is a concern that links Erica’s work with the work of our presiding spirit of the reading series, William Wordsworth. In Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, we see a deep desire to write ordinary life, time and time again.

The open mic theme this month is to write about the ordinary and everyday, and make them extraordinary. Open Mic slots must be booked in advance by contacting Kim Moore at [email protected]. Poems should be no longer than two minutes.