A Poet in Every Port - Southbank Centre

2026 sees the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain and of the creation of Southbank Centre. One of the flagship projects for the year is A Poet in Every Port, a national project celebrating poetry in coastal communities across the UK.

As Project Manager, I have been overseeing the fabrication of a specially designed Mobile Poetry Library which has been taking the collection of Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library on tour to 12 partner coastal towns and cities across the UK.

Across the four nations, I have been managing partnerships with local festivals and arts organisations and overseeing the delivery of 12 mini-festivals to celebrate the fact that poetry is for everyone. The project celebrates local dialects and all of the languages of the UK from Welsh to Gaelic with many poems written in mother tongues from around the world.