Summit Festival 2024 Pass

Summit Festival 2024 Pass

in-person Course

A day pass to our inaugural ecopoetry, nature, and climate writing festival.

Summit: A Poetry School Festival is a landmark ecopoetry, nature, and climate writing festival. This inaugural edition of the event take place in Leeds and bring together some of the UK’s most celebrated writers and ecological thinkers for two days of performances, workshops, poetry surgeries, and panel discussions. Please see the full programme below:

FESTIVAL HUB
HOUSE 10, CAVENDISH ROAD
10am – 6pm (Festival Ticket £10, includes all readings)
Leeds’ School of English plays host to the second day of Summit, with the festival hub located in House 10, Cavendish Road. All workshops and surgeries will take place in the same building. Poetry Book Society will be in attendance all day, both in the Douglas Jefferson Room, behind the School of English foyer, and in the Workshop Theatre (adjacent to Cavendish Road). Book your ticket via the green button on the left of this page.

THROUGH THE CRACKS: A WORKSHOP WITH CAROLINE BIRD
HOUSE 10, ALUMNI ROOM
10–11.30am (£20)
CAPACITY: 20
Sometimes it’s hard to write surrealism when the world keeps writing it for us. How can we be playful when the stakes are so high? How can we generate ideas in a landscape of crisis? Caroline Bird will approach the task of writing a burning world with wonder, weirdness, gallows humour and, if we’re lucky, a little bit of hope. This session is centred on continuing to create, cultivating poems that might burst up through the cracks. Book your session here.

1-2-1 POETRY SURGERIES
HOUSE 10
10–11.50am (£105)
CAPACITY: 4
In these focused and personalised sessions, hosted by John Whale and Matt Howard, attendees will be given feedback on their poems-in-progress, discussing the page as a space for understanding ecology and the environment. These surgeries are a unique opportunity to gain specialised editorial feedback. Book your session here.

CLIMATE SUMMIT
WORKSHOP THEATRE
12–1pm (Free with Sunday festival pass)
In this opening event, Simon Armitage will read a selection of recent poems alongside a winner of the Laurel Prize. Both poets will be in conversation with Emma Trott, Convenor of the Environmental Humanities Group, University of Leeds, as we consider the role of poetry, and the arts, and what it means to create amidst global emergency. 

PANEL 1: BLUE POETICS
WORKSHOP THEATRE
1.30–2.30pm (Free with Sunday festival pass)
Exploring the hydrosphere – through oceans, lakes, and fog, island ecosystems, and field notes written with glaciologists – these readings study the connection between water and words, bodies in mercurial transformative states. With readings from Niall Campbell, Helen Mort, and Alycia Pirmohamed. Chaired by Jeremy Davies, Associate Professor of English, University of Leeds.

PANEL 2: GEO, ECO, TOPO
WORKSHOP THEATRE
2.45–3.45pm (Free with Sunday festival pass)
These readings will examine the relationship between physical geography and its literary representation, where poetry is a form of placemaking and spatial and temporal creation, a means of understanding our relationship to the Earth as home. With readings from Khairani Barokka, Sean Borodale, and JR Carpenter. Chaired by Fiona Becket, Professor of Contemporary Poetics, University of Leeds.

PANEL 3: TOXIC STATES
WORKSHOP THEATRE
4–5pm (Free with Sunday festival pass)
Centred on environmental damage, corrosion, pollution, consumption, and the materiality of human and more-than-human interactions, these readings will examine the extent of anthropogenic destruction and multi-species entanglement. Featuring Rachael Allen, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, and John Wedgwood Clarke. Chaired by David Higgins. Professor of Environmental Humanities, University of Leeds. .

EVENING RECEPTION
HOUSE 10, CAVENDISH ROAD
5–6pm (Free with Sunday festival pass)
In this relaxed session, open to all attendees, we will be celebrating the close of the festival with a complimentary wine reception in the Douglas Jefferson Room.  

NATIONAL POETRY CENTRE PRESENTS
WORKSHOP THEATRE
6–7.15pm (Free with Sunday festival pass)
Nick Barley, Director of the National Poetry Centre, and former Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, closes out the Sunday with readings from T.S. Eliot Prize shortlisted poet, Zaffar Kunial, plus a headline poet to be announced in September.

RUBBISH WORDS
CORN EXCHANGE, LEEDS
18–20 October, 10am – 4pm (Free, open to public)
Recycling is good for the planet. Being creative is good for your health. Rubbish Words presents an entertaining, immersive and life-enhancing poetry pop-up project for people of all ages. We’ll provide the  (recycled) words: you cut them up in whatever way you like. Our team will work with you to help you create a poem of your own – and display it for others to read.

Questions & Accessibility

If you have any questions, wish to be added to the waiting list of anything that has sold-out course, or require any form of adjustment to access our programme, please email [email protected]. Access information specific to the festival weekend can be found here.

About Summit: A Poetry School Festival View Profile

Summit: A Poetry School Festival is a landmark ecopoetry, nature, and climate writing festival, with its inaugural edition being a collaboration between Poetry School, University of Leeds Poetry Centre, the Laurel Prize, the National Poetry Centre, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Summit’s ethos is centred around poetry, community, and action. It will provide a vital space to consider how words, and worlds, are deeply connected, and what role poetry plays as we face up to immense biodiversity losses, habitat destruction, rising carbon emissions and warming temperatures. 

The inaugural edition of the event will bring together some of the UK’s most celebrated writers and ecological thinkers for two days of performances, workshops, poetry surgeries, and panel discussions. Summit takes place 19 and 20 October at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the University of Leeds Poetry Centre, respectively.

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