Special Edition 2025 – 26
Special Edition – our monthly series of evening poetry events – returns for 2025 – 26, and we want your event proposals.
Whether you’re an established poet or poetry event organiser, or you’re new to poetry and are looking to be more involved, we’d love to hear from you.
Taking place monthly, Special Edition transforms the National Poetry Library into a backdrop for a myriad of poetry-related events, from readings to debates, Q&As to collaborative performances. In the past, the series has seen us host events from Dead [Women] Poets Society, The Pen Ting Poetry Showcase, The Mum Poet Club and many more.
So if you’ve got an idea for a live poetry event that could work in the National Poetry Library this is your chance to make it happen. We especially welcome proposals from Global Ethnic Majority applicants, LGBTQIA+ applicants, disabled or neurodiverse applicants and applicants from a low socio-economic or working-class background.
Before submitting your proposal, make sure you look at the need to know information below, and you may also want to explore some of our past events via our soundcloud archive.
Propose a Special Edition event
If you’ve read through the ‘need to know’ information below and you’d like to propose a poetry event as part of 2025 – 26 Special Edition series, please do so via our submission page linked below. We can’t wait to read it.
Need to know
Before submitting your proposal, please bear in mind the following.
Special Edition events take place between 8pm and 9.15pm on Wednesday evenings between June 2025 and March 2026.
There is an audience capacity of 52 seats.
Our events run for a maximum of 75 minutes with no interval.
Tickets are booked via the Southbank Centre’s website.
If we receive multiple proposals with similar themes, we may look at ways to combine two events in one evening.
Alongside the Special Edition events series we will be creating a number of online showcases which we may ask you to contribute to.
We will record the event and make it available to library users with the permission of performers.
We will provide the main event organiser with expenses of £250 to be distributed among the performers. For shared events we will offer £150 per organiser and for Online Showcases we pay £50 for a 10-minute contribution.
For your visit
National Poetry Library Southbank Centre
The National Poetry Library is open six days a week.
Tuesday, 12 noon – 6pm
Wednesday – Sunday, 12 noon – 8pm
Monday, closed.
Getting here
The National Poetry Library is on Level 5 of our Royal Festival Hall.
Our address is Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX.
The nearest tube stations to us are Waterloo and Embankment; Waterloo is also the nearest train station. And more than 20 different London bus routes pass within 500 metres of our venues. More information on getting here by rail, road or river is available on our Getting here page.
We’re cash-free
Please note that we’re unable to accept cash payments across our venues.
Access
We’re working hard to remove barriers, so that our facilities and events can be accessible to as many people as possible.
All help points, toilets, performance and exhibition spaces at the Southbank Centre are accessible to all, as are the cafes, bars and restaurants. We also have excellent public transport links with step-free access.
All information about booking wheelchair spaces, step-free access, blue badge parking, access maps and guides and other help available whilst you’re here, including details about our Access Scheme, can be found on our Access page.
Study & library use
The library is London’s only space dedicated to poetry study. Visitors studying another subject or looking for a place to work are kindly asked to find an alternative space in the Royal Festival Hall.
