Out-Spoken: June
Get your monthly helping of live music and hot-off-the-press poetry at our ever-popular night, hosted by poet Joelle Taylor.
Out-Spoken is the Southbank Centre’s resident poetry and live music night, bringing the hottest UK and international poets to perform alongside world-class musicians every month.
This month’s edition features poetry from Sanah Ahsan, Jay Gao and Caroline Bird, and music from Saori Miraku and Simeon Hammond Dallas.
Each monthly gig is hosted by TS Eliot- and Polari Prize-winning poet Taylor, with Kemanci spinning the best in reggae, soul and R&B for this edition.
Kemanci is a London-based producer and DJ who creates and performs multi-genre club music with inspiration from Jersey club, jungle, UK garage and more.
Sanah Ahsan is a poet, writer, liberation psychologist and educator. They’ve been awarded the Out-Spoken prize, and shortlisted for the Bridport, White Review and Queen Mary New Writing prizes. Sanah’s debut collection I cannot be good until you say it is published with Bloomsbury and was recently selected in The Guardian’s best poetry round-up.
Jay Gao is a poet from Edinburgh living in New York City. His debut poetry collection Imperium (Carcanet, 2022) is a winner of the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. He is also the author of four poetry pamphlets and chapbooks. Currently, he reads for Poetry magazine and is a PhD student in English at Columbia University.
Saori Miraku is a pianist-composer, improviser and performer based in London. Her music seeks to reach beyond the everyday world into a place of stories, memories, imagination, dreams and transformation. In doing so, she invites her audience to follow her on a journey of their own, to experience the beauty and magic of conversing with their true selves. Miraku released her piano solo album Many Times on Earth in December 2023.
Caroline Bird won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2020, a Cholmondeley Award in 2023, and has been shortlisted for a number of prizes including the TS Eliot Prize, the Costa Book Awards, the Ted Hughes Award, the Polari Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her latest collection, Ambush at Still Lake, is published in June 2024.
Simeon Hammond Dallas is a singer-songwriter from Camden Town. Growing up listening to her parent’s eclectic record collection that spanned The Cranberries to Ella Fitzgerald, Simeon’s own music traverses genres and draws on a broad palette of lived experiences to speak to the complexities of modern life. Her second studio EP, Make It Romantic, received high acclaim from Americana UK, Earmilk and Folk Radio.
Presented in association with Out-Spoken.
Need to know
For your visit
This event is held at the Purcell Room Southbank Centre
The Purcell Room is located in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which is open from 90 minutes before events start until they finish. It’s closed at all other times.
Plan your visit
The Purcell Room is an auditorium located within our Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Getting here
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.
Food & drink
From coffee to cocktails, filling favourites to fine dining, plus some of London’s best street food – it’s all here at the Southbank Centre.