Writers Salon: Sick Poems with Katie O'Pray

Come and join Connect through Creativity's CRIPtic x Spread the Word Salon with Katie O'Pray and sign up for the Salon open mic if you'd like to share your work.

Katie O’Pray invites discussion and connection, as they share poems and approaches that have informed their own writing on chronic illness and disability.

Together, we will look at poems that explore experiences of mental and physical ill health and disability. We’ll be sharing our responses to them and considering how they may guide or inspire us in our own writing practice.

Katie will also be reading from their debut collection APRICOT, which examines their overlapping and interwoven experiences with complex trauma, chronic illness, eating disorders and psychiatric hospitalisation.

Read your work at the sharing spot

There are five sharing spot slots available at the Salon and if you'd like to share your work please complete the following form by 11am, Friday 27 September:

You'll be asked to provide your contact details and a short bio and the reading you will be doing which should be no longer than 5 minutes. This is so we can send the work to our BSL interpreters in advance of the session. You can submit these in written English, video or audio file format.

About Katie O'Pray

Katie O’Pray is a poet and facilitator from Bedford. They have been the winner of The Ruth Weiss Foundation’s Emerging Poet’s Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. Their work has recently been associated with the National Poetry Competition and the Manchester Writing Competition, among others. Their ‘devastating’ debut collection APRICOT was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2022.

Access Information

• Auto-captions
• Self Descriptions
• BSL Interpretation
• Comfort Breaks

About CRIPtic Arts

CRIPtic Arts exists to ignite disabled excellence across the arts. We provide active disabled leadership which advances world-class arts work with disabled creatives. From high-quality community activities to showcasing breakthrough performers; we’re blazing a revolution in accessibility.

About Spread the Word

Spread the Word is London's literature development agency. We have have a national and international reputation for change-making research and developing programmes for writers that have equity and social justice at their heart.

With thanks to the City Bridge Foundation for supporting the CRIPtic x Spread the Word Salon and Connect through Connectivity.

Host or Publisher CRIPticArts