Aspyrian - Pizza Express Dean Street, March 2026

 

Robin Porter

Aspyrian

Robin Porter  - saxophone
Jack Gillen - guitar
Matt Parkinson - drums

Pizza Express Dean Street, Soho, London
31st March 2026

London-based contemporary jazz trio Aspyrian returns with their third release, Live at The Jazz Glad Festival – a raw document of the band’s electrifying live performance at The Glad Cafe, Glasgow in November 2024. Recorded during an 11-date run supported by the Help Musicians Next Level Award, the album features five original compositions that showcase Aspyrian’s signature balance of bold improvisation and deep musical chemistry.

Jack Gillen 

An unplanned recording, Live at The Jazz Glad Festival captures the trio in full flight – spontaneous, unfiltered, and emotionally present. Prioritising energy and interplay over polish, the recording embraces the ensemble’s risk-taking spirit, complete with its brief missteps, which only serve to highlight the authenticity of the performance.

Matt Parkinson

Live at The Jazz Glad Festival marks the end of a transformative chapter in Aspyrian’s evolution. It captures a band confident in its identity, forged through over a decade of shared experience and musical dialogue. With this release, Aspyrian further cements their place in the UK jazz scene – unafraid to be vulnerable, brave enough to take risks, and committed to the moment above all else. 

Versopolis Camarade 2026 - Poetry Society, London

Zuzana Husárová and SJ Fowler

Maria Barnas and Colin Herd
Peter Zavada and Jan Musil
Efe Duyan and Anna Siedykh
Zuzana Husárová and SJ Fowler
Petra Pálkovácsová and Laura Davis
Lavinia Singer and Caitlin Nugent
Alex Murphy and Sophia Rahim
Patrick Cosgrove and Richard Marshall 

March 11th 2026
The Poetry Society Cafe, London
22 Betterton St, London WC2H 9BX
poetrysociety.org.uk/poetry-cafe

Laura Davis and Petra Pálkovácsová

A special standalone Camarade event, where Versopolis poets visiting from multiple nations presented new works made with UK-based poet pairs - a series of premiere performances of literary and experimental poetry, all at the brilliant Poetry Society Cafe in the heart of the Covent Garden. 

Patrick Cosgrove and Richard Marshall 

Versopolis is one of the biggest poetry projects to ever take place in Europe, linking together innumerate poets and festivals, constantly creating connections and collaborations. Who could be a better partner for the European Poetry Festival?
www.versopolis.com

Lavinia Singer and Caitlin Nugent

Versopolis, founded in 2014, is a European poetry platform that creates new and sustainable opportunities for emerging poets. It supports the transnational mobility, visibility, and recognition of authors, offering a nurturing environment for artistic development across borders. The platform has been selected three times under the Creative Europe initiative “Support for European Platforms,” reflecting its relevance, reach, and long-term cultural impact.

Jan Musil and Peter Zavada

Versopolis enables emerging European poets to build international careers, placing their voices in dialogue with diverse audiences, languages, and literary communities. Like a literary agency without borders, it provides substantial organizational, financial, editorial, and promotional support. Poets are invited to leading European festivals, their work is translated into multiple languages, and they are integrated into a wide, supportive network of cultural actors.

Efe Duyan and Anna Siedykh

Translations are at the heart of the platform’s mission — Versopolis ensures that poets’ works circulate in print, digital, and multimedia formats, including e-books, booklets, online articles, and the Versopolis poetry database. Just as crucial is its strong commitment to mobility, offering poets curated guest appearances at international festivals, where they connect with fellow authors, readers, publishers, translators, and cultural organizers.

Alex Murphy and Sophia Rahim

Curated by SJ Fowler and Aljaž Koprivnikar.
This is the fifth Versopolis European Poetry Festival event, following events in 2020, 2023, 2024 and 2025

Maria Barnas and Colin Herd

Bob Barter Berrylands Bash

Bob Barter

30th November 2025 
The Berrylands Hotel, Surbiton

Jenny Howe (vocals)
Bob Barter (piano)
Paul Stiles (saxophone/clarinet/flute)
Simon Gardner (trumpet)
Richard Sadler (bass)
Eric Ford (drums)

Simon Gardner 

It was a packed house in the backroom of the Berrylands Hotel for the annual Bob Barter bash just before Christmas. To compensate for the sad loss of saxophonist Jimmy Hastings, who died in 2024, Bob had arranged a special Sax Quintet with the added firepower of Robert Tagg, Simon Clarke, Jonathan Hoad and Derrick Coonghe. 

Richard Sadler 

1st half

Title You Look Good to Me (Wells)
Hayburner (Nestico)
Don't Mean a Thing (Ellington)
Time After Time (Jule Styne)
Soul Bossa Nova (Quincy Jones)
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy (Zawinul)
The Christmas Song (Torme/Wells)
I'm Beginning to See the Light (Ellington)
So What (Miles Davis)
The Girl From Ipanema (A Carlos Jobim)
I Thought About You (Van Heusen/Mercer Arr BB)
Let's Go (Derek Nash)

2nd Half  

Lullaby in Rhythm (Hirsch, Profit, Sampson & Benny Goodman.)
Smiffy (Derek Nash)
Bob's November Blues (BB)
One Note Samba (A Carlos Jobim)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Martin/Blane)
My Baby Just Cares (W Donaldson/N Simone)
Nothing But the Truth (Al Grey)
Horace (Horace Silver)
All Blues (Miles Davis)
Look Of Love (B Bacharach)
Route 66 (Bobby Troop) 

Paul Stiles

Eric Ford

SJ Fowler - Small Publishers Fair 2025

 

SJ Fowler

Small Publishers Fair 2025
Launch of SJ Fowler’s Found Photo Poetry Postcards
and
A Zed and two 0s

SJ Fowler
Matt Sokulsky
Eleanor Wilders
David Spittle

Eleanor Wilders

The Small Publishers Fair is the annual gathering of books by writers, artists, poets, musicians, book designers and their publishers. It takes place in London’s historic Conway Hall, centre of humanism and literary Bloomsbury.
https://smallpublishersfair.co.uk 

Matt Sokulsky

a zed & two o’s
An anthology of poems on the animals of Shaldon Zoo
Shaldon Wildlife Trust is a zoo like no other. Nestled on a hill, a stone’s throw from the sea, in a beautiful corner of South Devon. It is a residence to binturongs, loris’, armadillos and poets. In 2024 and 2025, SJ Fowler, as part of his residency in the zoo, organised a series of walking tour events, inviting poets from across the UK, to read to an audience of various animals. This pocket-sized anthology brings together the best of those new poems, each written for and read to an animal of Shaldon. The anthology also includes an introduction by Zoo director Zak Showell.
Featuring the work of SJ Fowler, Colin Herd, Danica Ignacio, Will Rene, Matt Sokulsky, David Spittle, Vilde Bjerke Torset, Cameron Wade, Eleanor Wilders and Ellen Wiles.
Published by Sampson Low Ltd

David Spittle

Found Photo Poetry Postcards
In theorising what is possible for the photo poem while teaching at the Photographer’s Gallery, SJ Fowler proposed four possible ways the two mediums can interact. With each other, separately. With text upon image, somehow. With text made of image or language evoked with image, in sequence or otherwise. And finally, a photo of language. How would this last method be more than just documentation? When the photo was necessary, when it was intrinsic?
This limited edition set of twelve postcards, Obi wrapped as a bundle, presents photographs of language found in the world, and thus, photo poems. It is a sequence that demonstrates that language found on a high street, when divorced from context, can be more poetic than an ode. It suggests that the language people use and misuse when branding their business is often more creative than the best-selling novel. It is twelve simple photos that insist that conceptual poetry can be relatively funny, and oddly personal.
Published by Sampson Low Ltd

Poem Brut - Writers Kingston event #92 - October 2025

 

"Mass Sokulsky" by the IPLA Collective
Eleanor Wilders, Danica Ignacio, Cameron Wade

Writers Kingston event #92
Poem Brut October Thursday 9th 2025
Kingston University Town House

Julia Rose Lewis

Stephen Sunderland
Nikolai Duffy
Miya
Nadia Jordan, Mia Hale-McLeod and Cerys McVea (Students of the ‘Experiments and Innovations’ module, Kingston University)
Julia Rose Lewis
IPLA Collective: Eleanor Wilders, Danica Ignacio, Cameron Wade
Popogrou Collective: Bob T Bright, Vicki Kaye, Patrick Cosgrove and Simon Tyrrell
Lily Ferret
Bella Weerasinghe

Nadia Jordan, Mia Hale-McLeod and Cerys McVea

A truly unique evening of expansive literary performances involving staff, students and alumni of Kingston University alongside visiting writers, artists and musicians from across the UK and beyond. Poem Brut is an event series that embraces aesthetic possibility and all possible artistic poetic methods of writing, making and presenting poetry.

SJ Fowler and Miya

MIYA visited from Tokyo, presenting improvisation, while Stephen Sunderland launched his ground-breaking surrealist novel The Cinema Beneath the Lake. Both the Popogrou and IPLA collectives gave us lively collaborative performances while students from the ‘Experiments and Innovations’ module at Kingston University unwrapped a new live work. An energising evening of live literature, celebrating originality in all its forms. No wonder the Writers Kingston community continues to flourish as it nears 100 events since its inception in 2017.

Stephen Sunderland

The Cinema Beneath the Lake by Stephen Sunderland is a secret history of Surrealism, drawn from the hidden life of the Muse. Suzanne dreams her own revolution, summoning a band of impossible adventurers, she journeys toward the “Méduse” — the cinema beneath Lake Pavin — which will project their film-dreams to the clouds as riddling clues to our resolution in the world. 

Nikolai Duffy

Common, by Nikolai Duffy, tells the story of Robert, who in the aftermath of his aunt's death, travels from his home in Manchester to Hampshire to settle her affairs. In her house, faced with the left-behind detritus of an eccentric life, Robert makes the decision to leave his family and build a hut on the local common. This is a novel that explores death, memory, the long impact of brutality in childhood, and Robert's aunt's insistence that a person should live an 'unroofed life'.

Popogrou Collective: Bob T Bright, Vicki Kaye, Patrick Cosgrove and Simon Tyrrell

The Popogrou Collective is a group of poets whose work celebrates innovative writing practice at the cutting edge of contemporary literature. This collaborative jumble of creatives gather together language art, textual and visual poetry from nineteen active members. Popogrou, a worldwide collective, emerged from writer and artist SJ Fowler’s online Potential Poetries workshop programme, established during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

Bella Weerasinghe

Lily Ferret

Raymond MacDonald & Neil Charles - Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music

Raymond MacDonald (Solo Saxophone)

Friday 3rd October 2025

The Lit and Phil ‘Members Library’
Raymond MacDonald (Solo Saxophone)
Neil Charles (Solo Double Bass)

The Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music lit up the city with 12 concerts and 4 workshops, spread over 7 days. Venues included the Jesmond Swimming Pool, Ouseburn Victoria Tunnel, The Cumberland Arms, The Globe, Newcastle Civic Centre, Gosforth Civic Theatre, and The Literary and Philosophical Society.
www.newcastlefestivalofjazzandimprovisedmusic.co.uk

Neil Charles

In the wonderful atmospheric Members Library at the The Lit and Phil we were treated to two solo sets. First Raymond MacDonald with his saxophone, combining both mournful dirge and zesty desire lines. Followed by Neil Charles on double bass, whose Ellington shaped stepping stones helped him navigate from the reference section to the thriller shelves.
Look out for Neil's latest release, Dark Days, on Jazz In Britain's ‘new music’ imprint JAZZ NOW at
https://jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com/album/dark-days

Tea House Theatre Jazz Jam - Ben Gasiglia and friends

 

Benet McLean

Ben Gasiglia - guitar
Benet McLean - violin
Rio Kai - bass
Eric Ford - drums

Tuesday, 12th August, 2025
Tea House Theatre
139 Vauxhall Walk, London, SE11 5HL, UK

Ben Gasiglia

Jazz jam session on every second Tuesday of the month. House band 8-9.15pm, Jazz Jam 9.30-Midnight. A night of spontaneous improvisation, smooth rhythms, and electrifying performances.
London's finest jazz musicians in the most relaxed of environments, fabulous teas and cakes. Perfect for younger jazz fans as well as though that like listening to jazz in an easy chair. The night I sketched EJ Guy from Vancouver opened the jam session on drums.

Eric Ford

Next jam Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Pat Levett: Harmonica, Sam Leak: Keyboard, Ben Gasiglia: Guitar, Eric Ford: Drums, Spencer Brown: Double-Bass

Rio Kai