Will Harris, Romalyn Ante, Leo Boix with music from Emily Mercer: 25 October 2025

Please join us on Saturday 25 October 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:

Will Harris

Photo credit: Siqi Li

Will Harris is the author of RENDANG (2020) and Brother Poem (2023), both published by Granta in the UK and Wesleyan in the US. He has won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Siblings (a conversation with Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, and Nisha Rammaya) was published by Monitor Books in 2024. He is currently writing about the care sector.

Romalyn Ante

Romalyn Ante FRSL is an award-winning Filipino-British poet and editor. She currently sits on the editorial board for Poetry London. Romalyn was born and bred in Lipa, Philippines and migrated to the UK when she was sixteen. Her debut collection, Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto, 2020), was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second collection, AGIMAT (Chatto, 2024), was awarded the Arthur Welton Award, and was Poetry Book Society Recommendation and The Observer Poetry Book of the Month. She founded Tsaá with Roma, an interview series with poets and artists designed to engage, inform, and inspire the public. This initiative has since expanded to include generative workshops for writers. She is also the co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine dedicated to poets who write in English as a second or parallel language.

Leo Boix

Photo credit: Caleb Femi

Leo Boix is a bilingual Latinx poet from Argentina based in London. His debut English collection, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant (Chatto & Windus, 2021), was a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice and named one of The Guardian’s best poetry books of the year. His second, Southernmost: Sonnets (2025), explores queer and diasporic identity. Boix is the editor and lead translator of Hemisferio Cuir, and has translated key Latin American poets into English. His work appears in major journals and anthologies including 100 Queer Poems and The Forward Book of Poetry. A Complete Works fellow and co-director of Un Nuevo Sol, he mentors Latinx writers in the UK. Boix has received awards from PEN, Keats-Shelley, and Bart Wolffe, as well as commissions from Tate Modern, Kew Gardens, and more.

Emily Mercer

Emily Mercer is a genre-defiant indie artist based in Manchester. With a sound that is at once nostalgic and strikingly original, her songs are the sum of many parts, from indie pop hooks to jazz-inspired harmony backed by rich keys and smooth grooves. The result is warm and sophisticated with a nod to the timeless charm of classic piano-driven songwriting. Through a sharp and playful lyricism, Mercer draws us into her introspective spiral, exploring all that makes us messy and human.