Readings

Hosted by Maggie Hampford and Grace Moorhouse. Poets from the floor welcome. 

Richard Scott was born in London in 1981. His first book Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018) was a Gay’s the Word book of the year and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize. His second poetry collection, That Broke into Shining Crystals, is forthcoming from Faber & Faber in February 2025. Richard teaches poetry at the Faber Academy and is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His poetry has been translated into German and French.

Poet and performance artist Patrizia Longhitano hosts Venn Diagrams, a monthly poetry event with two main poetry guests, this month AV Bridgwood & Neimo Askar, readers from the floor, a projection of a poetry video and a break in the middle where wine and snacks are served. 

AV Bridgwood is a poet based in London. Their debut pamphlet Snack is published by ignitionpress; the title poem was highly commended in the 2025 Forward Prizes. They won the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize and were commended in the National Poetry Competition 2023. AV is a former Foyle Young Poet and graduated with distinction from UEA's MA in Creative Writing.

Neimo Askar is the founder of Poetry and Shaah, and explores the intersection of faith, disability and belonging.

Guest readers are members of the Torriano Thursday Poetry Group: Anne Berkely, Gale Burns, Martyn Crucefix, Peter Daniels, Susannah Hart, Lisa Kelly, Stuart McKenzie, Fiona Moore, Jeri Onitskansky, Christine Webb, Christopher Williams.

Readers from the floor welcome.

Guest readers: Cecilia Knapp, Rowe Irvin, Lena Ngoudjo hosted by Maggie Hampford and Grace Moorhouse.

Cecilia Knapp is a poet and novelist and the Young People’s Laureate for London 2020/2021. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward prize for best single poem. She is the winner of the 2021 Ruth Rendell award and has been shortlisted for both the Rebecca Swift Women’s prize and the Outspoken poetry prize. Her debut poetry collection Peach Pig was published by Corsair in 2022 and was the Observer’s poetry book of the month for October. Her poems have appeared in The Financial Times, Granta, The White Review, Wasafiri, Popshot, Ambit, Magma and bath magg and anthologised. MORE...

Rowe Irvin is a writer and artist. In 2025 she was named one of The Observer’s Best New Novelists. Her work has appeared in Prototype, Southword, Unquiet Slumbers (Nepenthé Press) and The Stinging Fly. She was awarded second prize in the 2024 Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Bath Short Story Award. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester. Her debut novel, Life Cycle of a Moth, is published by Canongate Books.

Lena Ngoudjo is multidisciplinary artist woven by her obsession with undressing the raw beauty of the bare self through the complexities of self-expression and the merging realms intersecting culture and identity. Her craft focuses on untangling Black expression and the strangeness of humanity amongst nature, often juxtaposing the joys and pains of life. Through her passion for all things poetic, sonic, and visually striking, she stirs a mixture of performance, spoken word poetry, and multimedia art that challenges traditional Western ideology and contemporary art forms.

Poet and performance artist Patrizia Longhitano hosts Venn Diagrams. She pairs poets whose work has no apparent connection and the audience discovers points of overlap. 
Poets from the floor welcome

Poets from the floor welcome

Louise Walker was born in Southport and lives in SE London. She taught English for 35 years at girls’ schools. She has been Highly Commended in the Frosted Fire Firsts Award and longlisted in in The Alchemy Spoon Pamphlet Competition. In 2023 she was shortlisted in the Bedford Competition and won 3^rd prize in the Ironbridge Poetry Competition. Her debut collection, From There to Here was published by Dithering Chaps in 2024.

Mat Riches is from Norfolk, but lives in Beckenham. He has previously worked in a plastics factory, a variety of pubs, and a book wholesaler, but currently works in market research and as ITV’s (unofficial) poet-in-residence. He’s also a trainee Bongosero. When he’s not doing those things, he’s either being a parent, a husband or running.  Sometimes all of them at once. He co-runs Rogue Strands poetry evenings, and blogs at Wear The Fox Hat. A pamphlet, Collecting the Data, is out via Red Squirrel Press.

Neil Elder won the Cinnamon Press debut collection prize with The Space Between Us, as well as their pamphlet prize with Codes of Conduct, also shortlisted for a Saboteur Award. He has a number of other publications; his latest work is Like This, from 4 Word Press. Widely published in magazines and journals, he is now looking for a home for the next collection. Neil occasionally writes at https://neilelderpoetry.wordpress.com/ 

Poet and performance artist Patrizia Longhitano hosts Venn Diagrams, a monthly poetry event with two main poetry guests, a readers from th floor, a projection of a poetry video and a break in the middle where wine and snacks are served. 

£6/£5 according to pocket. Readers from the floor welcome.

Will Stone is a poet, essayist and literary translator. His first poetry collection Glaciation (Salt, 2007) won the International Glen Dimplex Award award for Poetry (Dublin, Ireland) in 2008. Subsequent collections Drawing in Ash (Salt, 2011), The Sleepwalkers (Shearsman 2016) and The Slowing Ride (Shearsman 2020) have been critically appraised. A fifth collection Immortal Wreckage was published by Shearsman in July 2024. Will’s published translations from French and German include works by Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Georg Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gérard de Nerval, Georg Simmel, Maurice Betz, Emile Verhaeren and Georges Rodenbach. Will’s latest published translations were Nietzsche in Italy by Guy de Pourtalès (Pushkin Press, 2022) and Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach (Wakefield Press, 2022). Letters around a Garden, a collection of Rilke’s letters in French was published in May 2024 and Conversations with Rilke by Maurice Betz was published by Pushkin in January 2025. Will has contributed reviews, essays, poems and translations to a number of literary and art publications including the Times Literary Supplement, the London Magazine, the Spectator, Apollo Magazine, the RA Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, White Review, Irish Pages, PN Review and Poetry Review.

Martyn Crucefix: a chapbook, Walking Away, is due from Dare-Gale Press, late 2025. Other publications: Between a Drowning Man (Salt, 2023); Cargo of Limbs (Hercules Editions, 2019); a Rilke selected poems, Change Your Life (Pushkin Press, 2024). These Numbered Days, translations of Peter Huchel (Shearsman) won the Schlegel-Tieck Translation Prize, 2020; a new translation of Jurgen Becker’s 1993 collection, Foxtrot at the Erfurt Stadium due from Shearsman, 2026. Blog/website: http://www.martyncrucefix.com

Stephen Watts's most recent books include 'Republic Of Dogs/Republic Of Birds' (Prototype, 2nd edition 2020) & 'Journeys Across Breath : Poems 1975-2005' (Prototype 2022). In 2021 Peer Gallery published his edition of 'Swirl Of Words/Swirl Of Worlds : Poems From 94 Languages Spoken Across Hackney'. His 'Selected Poems' in Spanish translation was published in Bogota in May 2025 & 'A Book Of Drawn Poems' will be published by Joe Hales's Sylvia imprint in September 2025. Huw Wahl made a 70 minute 16ml b/w film of 'The Republics' in 2019 which has been shown at many art film festivals internationally. Stephen has read at Torriano often in the past & Hearing Eye published two long sequences of his poetry with Italian translation by Cristina Viti in 2008 & 2011