Events & Workshops

March-June 2026

Tuesday 12th March,
Soho Poly Poetry, 16 Riding House Street, London
reading with Erica Hesketh, Nick Makoha, and Wayne Holloway-Smith
Tickets available via Eventbrite
https://sohopoly.co.uk/events/soho-poly-poetry-6/

Saturday 28th March
Deptford Literature Festival
panel reading with Sarah Howe, Erica Hesketh, hosted by April Yee
https://www.londonwriterscentre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DLF26-Programme-FINAL-INTERACTIVE-220125.pdf

*****

2025

Thursday 14 August, Edinburgh international literature festival

Minx graced the pages of the Guardian newspaper as one of Rishi Dastidar’s ‘Best Poetry of 2025’. Rishi writes… ‘Karen Downs‑Barton’s debut Minx, Chatto & Windus (is) eye-catching, unsparingly detailing both the poet’s time in the care system, and the wider discrimination she experienced coming from an Anglo-Romany background. Her use of Roma language in her poems adds an unexpected lushness to the often bleak content.’
It was lovely to rub shoulders with other Chatto poets, Leo Boix for Southernmost Sonnets and my editor Sarah Howe for Foretokens and a number of other books I’ve loved diving into this year including Isabelle Baafi’s wonderful Chaotic Good. Thank you to Sarah and my Chatto team, my ever supportive agent Elise and to Rishi for his generous remarks and reading. What a fabulous way to end the year.

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/thepoetrybusiness/episodes/Karen-Downs-Barton-O-Kukeli-Korri-A-Dolls-House-e36iksg

Ledbury Poetry Festival

Friday 4th July

Catch our episode of The Verb here>

On SATURDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2-4PM – I’ll be reading alongside Jeff Phelps at the Trowbridge Stanza, run by Josephine Corcoran at Drawing Projects UK, Trowbridge. Josephine posts news of each month’s meeting in her newsletter and holds small group poetry workshops in Bradford-on-Avon. Details here. Check out details here.

I am holding a number of online workshops for Creative Future:

A Compelling Character. Monday 22nd January 2024, 6.30-8.00. Full. Please contact Creative Future to add your name to the waiting list.

Whether we’re writing poetry, prose or memoir, how can we make our work authentic and characterful? This workshop takes examples of contemporary writers across genres, including those using poetry and hybrid forms, and examining how they create characters that readers believe in.

We’ll practice becoming close observers and literary magpies, taking pointers from contemporary methods to build multi-layered, original actors. We’ll experiment with reshaping methods to suit your style, genre, and subject and talk about the moment when a character takes on a life of their own.

Experimenting with a range of writing exercises the workshop focuses on how to observe with a writer’s eye, reimagining people, and their situations to invent characters that are new, compelling, and all your own.

Ekphrasis. Monday 8th January, 2024. 6.30-8.00. Full. Please contact Creative Future to add your name to the waiting list.

This workshop draws from the long history of writers who have been inspired by visual arts and visual artists inspired by literature. Writers have been compelled to put pen to paper by paintings, photographs, and strange or meaningful objects.

We’ll explore examples including Dante Gabrielle Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites to the contemporary writing of Jane Yeo and Rebecca Perry, creating exciting conversations between writing and art.

This workshop looks at how responding to the arts can open doors to new worlds and new characters our writing can inhabit. This workshop aims to challenge and transform your current creative process, building a treasure trove of visual stimuli.

Prepare to come away with original and surprising work as well as ideas about sources of inspiration to suit your writing style and genre. You’ll never have to wonder what to write about again.

Experimenting with a range of writing exercises the workshop focuses on how to observe with a writer’s eye, reimagining people, and their situations to invent characters that are new, compelling, and all your own.

Thinking Across the Page. Wednesday 18th October 2023. 6.30-8.00

Why do we sometimes find filling an empty page with words of our own so daunting, so painful? In this workshop, we’ll look at ways to spark new and unexpected ideas, to re-shape them on the page with editing for creative pieces that can be as pain-free as thinking. These writing exercises will take examples of exciting techniques used by contemporary writers, experimenting with the frames they’ve created and reshaping those frames to suit our personal styles. While developing a useful toolbox of techniques we’ll play with form, write and un-write letters, and use Surrealist methods to challenge and enhance writerly practice.  

This session is for all writers, new or seasoned, whether you’re working on fiction, non-fiction, plays, essays, theses or poetry.  FULLY BOOKED. Contact Creative Future to add your name to the waiting list.

I’m headlining at Cheltenham Poetry Festival with the lovely Rachel Clyne on Monday 31st July. I’ll be reading from my Poetry Society Recommended pamphlet Didicoy, and some new pieces from my forthcoming collection. Tickets available through Ticket Source. Do come along… There’s an open mic for fellow poets to share their work too.

Wednesday 22nd March, 2023.

Satellite of Love – Poetry and Spoken Word at the Lightship, Bristol.

A great venue, welcoming audience, and a fab night of poetic delights. I will definitely be back!

Saturday 18th March 2023: The Poetry Business Competition Winners Reading, International Book and Pamphlet Competition winners 2022 @ Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere.

Reading in the atmospheric setting of the book-lined Reading Room in the Jerwood Centre at Wordsworth Grasmere was an absolute treat.

This amazing event included the four winning poets of the 2021 competition, selected by Daljit Nagra and Pascale Petit, the poets Dean Browne for his collection Kitchens at Night, Jim McElroy for this collection We are the Weather, Maya C Popa for her collection Dear Life, and Anastasia Taylor-Lind for her collection One Language.

The four winning poets of the 2022 competition were selected by Jonathan Edwards and Romalyn Ante and included myself for Didicoy, Jon Miller for his collection Past Imperfect, Future Tense, Zoë Walkington for her collection I hate to be the one to tell you, and Luke Samuel Yates for his collection The Mystery Shopper.

Saturday 22nd October:

So excited to be reading at the London Literature Festival at the South Bank in October. If you’re coming along please grab me and say ‘Hi’. I’m the Silver award winner in the poetry category of the Creative Future competition and will be receiving my prize alongside some amazing writers. As if that weren’t enough to tempt you the T.S.Elliot prize winner 2022 Joelle Taylor will be reading too. https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/talks-debates/creative-future-writers-day

Thursday 15th September 2022:

I’ll be reading my award winning poem Framed by Woodgrain and discussing poetry competitions, Creative Future, why I write and so much more on BBC Radio Wiltshire. The station is available online so do check it out at 12.10.

4th September, Tears in the Fence Poetry Festival

I’m a featured poet at the Tears in the Fence Poetry Festival reading a number of poems from my forthcoming collection and new work from my second collection. Check out the web site for more details. This is a long weekend of poetic indulgence so why not make a mini poetry break of it?

7th July, Lumb Bank, West Yorkshire.

It was my pleasure to be MC and read alongside so many amazing poets at the home of Ted Hughes, Lumb Bank, at a wonderfully productive Arvon retreat. I shared poems from my forthcoming collection, Didicoy, and some of the poems from my PhD collection. A massive ‘thank you’ to the Mimi Khalvati, Zaffar Kunial, the Lumb staff, and all the fun, creative and raucous writers who made it such a memorable time.

Friday 24th – Saturday 25th June

Reading at the Conditions and Terms: Methods and Disciplines of Knowledge conference, Kings College, The Strand. I’m delivering a paper about the GRT and one of the organising team too.

Phew!!!