Coast to Coast to Coast Individual Poet Prize Reading

Saturday 5 July / 6pm–8pm / Open Eye Gallery / free, RSVP

Come along to a wonderful 2025 launch event featuring the winners of the latest Coast to Coast to Coast Prize for Individual Poets: Sarah Westcott, Will Kemp and Jean Atkin. Poets will each read from their hand-stitched journals. 

There will also be readings from the latest anthology by local poets who have been writing with The Life Rooms during 2023-2025. There will be readings, refreshments and an opportunity to talk to poets and to buy hand-made limited edition journals. 

Hand-stitched journals featured:

Sarah Westcott’s Almanac 

Sarah has published two collections with Pavilion Poetry – Slant Light, and Bloom which was shortlisted for the Ledbury Hellens Prize for best second collections in 2023. Her second pamphlet, Pond, a hybrid piece, was published by The Braag in 2024. She is researching a PhD on the poem as a multi-species event and lives on the edges of London and Kent with her family.

Will Kemp’s All that Sky

Will teaches Creative Writing at York University, and judges both the Keats-Shelley Prize and Young Romantics Prize. He has won the Keats-Shelley Prize, the Cinnamon Short Story Competition, the Debut Collection Award, the Cinnamon Pamphlet Competition and the Envoi International. He has also come second in the Keats-Shelley Prize and Poetry Society’s Stanza Competition, and been well-placed in many others. Will has had three full poetry collections published, as well as an award-winning pamphlet. His debut short story collection, Surviving Larkin, was published by Valley Press (2024). His fourth full poetry collection, In Another Life, is forthcoming from Valley Press. 

Jean Atkin’s Not Far From Ragged Kingdom

Jean’s third full poetry collection High Nowhere (IDP, 2023) was nominated for the 2024 Laurel Prize. Her poetry has won competitions, been commissioned, anthologised, and featured on BBC Radio 4. Her collaboration, Crossing Paths, with Richard Skinner will be published by Black Cat Press in 2026. She is also working on a book about women writer/travellers, much of which was written during a month’s writing residency in Latvia in 2024. Since 2010 Jean has worked as a poet in education and community, often in collaboration with other artists. 

Event organised by artist and poet Maria Isakova-Bennett / Coast to Coast to Coast 

Image: Maria Isakova-Bennet