An In Conversation with J. T. Welsch

Join us for a thoughtful, carefully held conversation with J. T. Welsch, author of The Poetry of Suicide -Lessons in grief from the lives and deaths of poets

In this event, Welsch reflects on poetry’s long engagement with suicide, drawing together literary voices such as Hamlet, Dante, Sylvia Plath, and Vladimir Mayakovsky with the deeply personal history of suicide within his own family. Rather than offering answers or conclusions, the conversation explores ambiguity, contradiction, and the limits of interpretation, asking what poetry can teach us about experiences that resist simple explanation.

The event will take place as a guided conversation, with space for listening, reflection, and audience questions.

Please note: this event engages with themes of suicide and death. A gentle content note and support resources will be shared. Attendees are welcome to step out at any point. 

Celebrate the York launch of Andrew Neilson's debut poetry collection, Little Griefs. Also reading at the Poetry Pharmacy will be Kathryn Gray, Katy Mahon and Matthew Paul.

"This collection has got everything – philosophy, myth, elegy, hilarity, grace, tenderness, pain and wisdom, all in brilliant proportion." – Rachael Boast

Andrew Neilson works in prison reform and co-edits Bad Lilies. He is the author of the pamphlet Summers Are Other (Rack Press) and the debut collection Little Griefs (Blue Diode Press).

Join Forward-nominated poet Catherine Redford for this talk and reading from her debut poetry collection, The Way the Water Held Me. A mesmeric plunge into the caring, grief, loss, and love experienced by a young widow, The Way the Water Held Me has been described by Fiona Benson as 'a gorgeous wound and wonder of a book' and by Liz Berry as 'a beautiful, heartbreaking book that charts deepest grief and deepest love'.

A Magma Selected Poet, Catherine’s work has also been published in Under the Radar, Propel, New Welsh Reader, and Lighthouse. She is an editor at Dust Poetry magazine, a Nine Arches Press Dynamo Poet, and a Writing West Midlands Room 204 Writer. 

The latest in a series of eight events from the Royal Literary Fund, bringing together poets, playwrights, authors and screenwriters from across Northern England. In this event, award winning poets Tahmina Ali, Bob Beagrie and Harry Man discuss how poems can heal, do poems have some particular secret sauce that makes them memorable and can they change the direction of our lives? How do poetry readers access this change? How do poets see their artform’s impact in their own lives? All three writers will dip into the archive of the Royal Literary Fund, drawing on the words of some of the country’s leading poets, using what they find as a springboard for their discussion.

All welcome!