Residencies

Since 2015, DWPS have been resurrecting women poets of the past. In live ‘séances’ and online, they aim to highlight women’s astonishing but too-often forgotten literary heritage, and open up conversations between living writers and their great-great-grandmothers. Poets such as Rachel Long, Helen Mort, Caroline Bird and Warda Yassin have communed with Audre Lorde, Sarah Kane, Anna Wickham, Lucille Clifton and more, reading their poems to a candle-lit audience and reflecting on how their chosen Dead Women Poets have influenced them.

Sheaf Poetry Festival will welcome DWPS to host a workshop and event in the extra-special venue of Sheffield General Cemetery cemetery, featuring prize-winning poet Charlotte Shevchenko Knight who will resurrect Ukrainian activist and leading writer Lesia Ukrainka. Then we’ll hold our popular open mic, where audience members of all genders and none take to the stage, sharing a poem by a dead woman poet as well as (or instead of) a poem of their own.

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Luke Worthy is a queer poet and fiction writer from Sheffield now based in Amsterdam. His work has been published in journals and anthologies including Poetry Wales, Youth Word Up, Surfing the Twilight (2019) and Dear Life (2022). He was shortlisted for the New Poet’s Prize 2021 and has been commissioned to write a piece of children’s literature for Leeds 2023. Luke is an alumnus of Sheffield Young Writers and a member of Hive Poetry.

For his residency with Sheaf Poetry Festival 2023, Luke will be writing a commissioned poem on our festival theme of Brains & Consciousness, which will be published on the Sheaf website in the near future.

He will also be reading at alongside Yomi Sode at the Hive Young Writers showcase event.


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