Habitué: Poetry Salon

This is the first of two poetry salons, chaired by poet, playwright, and theatre-maker Faye Draper, which will explore addiction within the literary canon and consider how women’s lives, work and experiences have been represented and remembered.

These salons accompany the new exhibition Habitué opening at Manchester Poetry Library on 21 September 2026. Habitué is a new exhibition curated by Faye Draper, in collaboration with The Poetry Library, supported by The Portico Library and funded by Arts Council England.

Through biographic material, poetry and archival works, the exhibition explores women’s experiences of addiction alongside their literary legacies, asking how figures including Mary Robinson, Sara Coleridge, Elizabeth Siddal, and Anne Sexton have been represented and remembered. Their voices are placed in dialogue with contemporary women and gender queer poets including HLR, JP Seabright and Joelle Taylor, revealing how experiences of addiction, recovery, gender, and class continue to shape women’s writing and its place within an expanding literary canon.

Visitors to the exhibition are invited to interact with Draper’s poetry exploring her experiences of active addiction and recovery. This intimate encounter brings the private realities of addiction into a shared public space.