Please join us on Saturday 27 September 2025, 2.30-4.00 at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for a wonderful line-up of poets and musicians.
You will find all the information you need regarding visiting the IABF on their website here. The event is free and everyone is welcome (no need to book tickets). Performers often bring along books and CDs to sell, please note we are only able to accept cash payments.
You can read about the poets and musicians below:
Sasha Dugdale
Sasha Dugdale is a poet and translator. Her sixth book of poetry, The Strongbox, was published by Carcanet in 2024 and won the Angle-Hellenic League Runciman Award. Deformations (2020) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot and Derek Walcott Prizes. Her long poem ‘Joy’ was awarded a Forward Prize in 2016.
Dugdale’s translations have won PEN Awards and been shortlisted for the International Booker, the James Tait Black Prize and Warwick Prize for Women’s Writing amongst others. Her translation of Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory won the MLA Lois Roth Award. Her translations of new writing for theatre have been widely produced, including stagings by the Royal Court Theatre in London, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Public Theater in New York.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and former editor of the international magazine Modern Poetry in Translation.
Deryn Rees-Jones
Photo credit: Alison Dodd
Deryn Rees-Jones was educated at the University of Wales, Bangor, and Birkbeck College, London. She is an Eric Gregory Award winner, and The Memory Tray (Seren Books, 1995) was shortlisted for a Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. In 1996 she received an Arts Council of England Writer’s Award. Her collection of work includes: Signs Round A Dead Body (Seren Books, 1998), Quiver (Seren Books, 2004), Consorting With Angels (Bloodaxe, 2005), Modern Women Poets (Bloodaxe, 2005) and And You, Helen (Seren Books, 2014), a meditation on Helen and Edward Thomas, illustrated by Charlotte Hodes. In 2010 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. Deryn’s poetry collection Burying the Wren was on the 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize shortlist, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year. Erato (2019) was again a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is also the author of Paula Rego: The Art of Story (Thames & Hudson 2019) and the lyric essay Fires (Shoestring, 2019). She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024.
Her collection What It’s Like to be Alive: Selected Poems (Seren, 2016) (Poetry Book Society Special Commendation) is a mid-career milestone of this highly-acclaimed writer.
Deryn Rees-Jones is Professor of Poetry at the University of Liverpool, and editor of the Pavilion Poetry list, part of Liverpool University Press.
Louise Machen
Louise Machen is a widely published Mancunian poet with an MA in Creative Writing from The University of Manchester. She has a collaborative pamphlet, The Words of Others are All We Have, with Hedgehog Press, a Forward Prize nominated collection, I Am Not Light, with Black Bough Poetry and a collaborative audiobook of poetry, Which Way the Words Grow.
Li Lu
Originally from China, cellist Li Lu has performed across Asia and Europe. She was featured in the Sky Arts documentary Art of Survival (2011), reaching a vast audience in the UK and internationally. Following this experience she recorded one of her major solo works In Love with Bach-the complete Bach Cello Suites.
Li Lu enjoys collaborating with various type of musicians and artists and has been a recipient of several awards from Arts Council England, BBC Performing Arts Fund and Irish Arts Council.
In addition to her exciting performing career, Li Lu teaches at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, where she is passionate about working with talented young musicians.
Lulu Yang
Lulu Yang was born in China. She started to play the piano at the age of 5 and from 1999 to 2004 she studied at Chetham’s School of Music with Manola Hatfield and Norma Fisher on a full scholarship. She continued her study with Norma Fisher at the Royal Northern College of Music and in 2008 she graduated with a first class honours degree. In 2010 she graduated with a Masters degree at Yale School of Music with Peter Frankl.
Lulu currently teaches piano at Chetham’s School of Music and she performs regular concerts including solo piano and chamber music.
Poets & Players 