Poetic Dreamscapes in a World of Broken Sleep

Edgar Allan Poe famously wrote: All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream (Dream within a Dream). These three poets, some of them fittingly linked to or published by Broken Sleep Books, respond to the world in ways that are often dreamlike and surreal, brokering a poetics that is inherently disconcerting for the non-initiated but comforting to those that regularly dare to dream.

Join us on Saturday 31st January at The Community Works at 7.30pm for readings from three poets: Christopher Horton, Laura Theis, and Phoebe Nicholson, and a chance to share your own work during an open mic segment!

Set readings will be followed by an open mic where you are welcome to bring your own work to share. Sets are 2-3 minutes – please sign up on the door.

Tickets are £5 each (£2 concessions).

The building is accessible, but if you have any specific access needs, please drop us an email at [email protected] beforehand.

Christopher Horton grew up in Oxfordshire but now lives in Kent. His poems have appeared in The North, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Acumen, Ambit, Iota, Magma, SOUTH, The Wolf, Stand, Frogmore Papers, and in anthologies with Penned in the Margins, Broken Sleep Books, tall-lighthouse and Days of Roses. He was a prize winner in the National Poetry Competition and the Bridport Prize. His first pamphlet, Perfect Timing, was released by tall-lighthouse press in 2021 and a second pamphlet was released by Broken Sleep Books in 2026.

Phoebe Nicholson is a British-American poet and lexicographer. Her work has appeared in various places online and in magazines, but you’re better off catching her around the Oxford open mic scene. You can also find more of her work in a chapbook called Red Devon Mud which contains poems about roots, family, and creeping things, illustrated by her sibling. It can be found here: https://oxfordpoetrylibrary.com/shop/ She also founded and directs the Oxford Poetry Library, a grassroots, volunteer-run library of poetry and hub for creative writing and spoken word based in central Oxford. Find her on instagram: @phoebn.

Laura Theis’ work appears in Poetry, Oxford Poetry, Cambridge Poetry, iamb, Mslexia, Rattle, Magma, etc. Her Elgin-Award-nominated debut, an Oxford Poetry Library Book-of-the-Month, won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize. Her second book, A Spotter’s Guide To Invisible Things, won the Live Canon Collection Prize and the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. Other accolades include the Alpine Fellowship Award, Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, AM Heath Prize, Mogford Prize, Hammond House Literary Award, and a Forward Prize nomination. Her latest collection is ‘Introduction To Cloud Care’.

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