About this Event
Saturday 31st January, 5pm - 9.30pm
The International Poetry Festival London is a multidisciplinary celebration of contemporary poetic expression, bringing together 30 artists from 12 countries for a one-day gathering of spoken word, poetry, performance, and visual art. Curated by The Institute for Experimental Arts, the festival creates a space where poetry expands beyond the page and becomes a live, embodied, and socially engaged act. Voices from different cultures, languages, and artistic practices meet on stage, forming a dynamic dialogue that reflects the urgencies, contradictions, and dreams of our time. The festival embraces poetry as a living art form—political, intimate, experimental, and collective—capable of crossing borders and building temporary communities through shared experience. By connecting international artists with local audiences in London, the International Poetry Festival affirms poetry’s power to resist isolation, provoke thought, and imagine new ways of being together in a fragmented world.
Performers
Lucy English (UK)
Rakaya Fetuga (Ghana/ Nigeria / UK)
Miss Yankey (UK / Ghana)
Ernesto Sarezale
(Basque Country)
Tasneim Zyada (Palestine / UK)
Woodzy (UK)
Baby O (Lebanon / UK)
Redeeming Features (UK)
Sami Rhymes (UK)
Angelina Farmer (UK)
Maureen Onwunali (Ireland / Nigeria)
Tia – Zakura (UK)
Hlín Leifsdóttir & Morton
(Iceland / Greece)
Dinan Alasad (Sudan)
ANNOTATE (UK)
Natalie Katsou (UK / Greece)
Princess Latifah (UK)
Han Newton & Jess Hunt (UK)
Sissy Doutsiou (Greece)
BROKENPEN (UK)
Tasos Sagris & Whodoes (Greece)
Eljae (SUDAN / UK)
Visual Arts
Global Eye
Global Eye is a visual artist whose work explores perception, scale, and the shifting relationship between the observer and the world, creating images that invite viewers to look again and see differently.
Error / Eros — Sarah Tremlett
Sarah Tremlett is a pioneering poetry film theorist, artist, and author of The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books), whose work blends visual poetics, feminist inquiry, and experimental film language.
Void Optical Laboratory
Void Optical Laboratory, part of the long standing anarchist art collective Void Network, creates experimental visual environments that explore perception, abstraction, and the shifting boundaries between analogue distortion and digital image making.
The Institute for Experimental Arts Archives
The Institute for Experimental Arts Archives and FILM POETRY digital platform of international video poetry present rare visual materials, documents, and artefacts tracing the evolution of radical poetry, performance, and avant garde media practices.
Credits
Southwest Youth Arts
Filmpoetry.org
Age guidance: This performance does not have an age limit.
Interval: This performance does not have an interval.
Tickets: Tickets are £10 and available through Eventbrite
Accessibility
See our Accessibility Guide for information about access in our venue.
About The Institute [for Experimental Arts]
The International Poetry Festival in London brings together 30 artists from 12 countries for a five‑hour celebration of spoken word, poetry, and global creative exchange. Taking place on Saturday 31 January 2026 at Deli Theatre, the festival is produced by the Institute for Experimental Arts and supported by Southwest Youth Arts. The programme highlights the vibrant diversity of contemporary poetics, featuring emerging youth performers, internationally acclaimed spoken word artists, video‑poem directors, and creators whose work reflects the evolving forms of 21st‑century expression. Rooted in the spirit of the “Generation of 2000,” the festival presents poetry as a living force shaped by social movements, anti‑authoritarian thought, queer feminism, anti‑colonial theory, and the urgent realities of our time.
Instagram: @instituteartgreece
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Theatre Deli, 107 Leadenhall Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 11.19
