The Caster Cultural Fellows in Poetry

Name: The Caster Cultural Fellows in Poetry
Start: 2026-06-09T18:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-06-09T19:00:00+01:00
Location: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds

Schedule

Tue Jun 09 2026 at 06:00 pm to 07:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, University of Leeds | Leeds, EN

Join Poetry@Leeds and Leeds Literature Festival for a special celebration with readings from past Caster Cultural Fellows Helen Mort, Malika Booker, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Zaffar Kunial and Matt Howard and the announcement of the next Caster Fellow.
Made possible by the generosity of the Caster family, Caster Cultural Fellowships in Poetry at the University of Leeds are designed to nurture creativity at a crucial stage in a poet’s development. The work of Caster Cultural Fellows in Poetry continues to shape the poetry landscape in the UK and internationally.
Followed by a wine reception.
Poetry@Leeds in partnership with Leeds Literature Festival.
£10 + booking fee
Meet the poets
Helen Mort is a poet, novelist and non fiction writer. Her poetry collections Division Street, No Map Could Show Them and The Illustrated Woman are published by Chatto & Windus. Her memoir A Line Above The Sky won the Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain literature and the Banff Grand Prize in Canada. She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Malika Booker’s pamphlet Breadfruit (flippedeye publishing) was recommended by the Poetry Book Society and her debut collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press) was longlisted for the OCM Bocas prize (2014) and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre prize for first full collection (2014). She is published with the poets Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguins Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017). Her poem Nine Nights was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single poem in 2017. She is the founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, a writing collective that has produced award winning poets since 2001.
Anthony V. Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Currently Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of York, their site-specific word and visual art includes responses to Cornwall’s former capital, Launceston, as the Causley Trust Poet in Residence (2022) and to the Ubatuba granite of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (2023), as well as to Scottish, Irish, and Caribbean built and natural environments. Their numerous books and pamphlets, from No Traveller Returns (Salt, 2003), Person Animal Figure (Landfill, 2005) onwards, are distinguished by deliberate engagement with independent and small presses. Their work has been recognized with the Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors), the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Windham-Campbell Prize, and the Saltire National Poetry Award. Their publications include Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet, 2021) (Poetry Book Society Choice), A Happiness (Intergraphia, 2022) and Polkadot Wounds (Carcanet, 20250.
Zaffar Kunial was born in Birmingham and lives in Hebden Bridge. He is a recipient of Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize and his first poetry collection, Us, published by Faber & Faber in 2018 appeared on a number of shortlists including the Costa Poetry Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His second collection, England’s Green, was The Times Poetry Book of the Year and was placed 2nd in the Laurel Prize for environmental or nature poetry.
Matt Howard is a poet and environmentalist who worked in various roles for the RSPB for more than a decade. His first pamphlet The Organ Box was published by Eyewear in 2014 and his debut collection Gall was published by The Rialto in 2018. Gall won the inaugural Laurel Prize for Best First Collection in 2020 and the 2018 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry and was also shortlisted for the 2019 Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize. His second book-length collection, Broadlands, was published by Bloodaxe in 2024. It won the poetry category of the ASLE-UKI Book Prize 2025 from the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK and Ireland), an award which recognises work with an environmental theme.