The Poetry Society is delighted to present the launch readings for the Summer 2026 issue of The Poetry Review, edited by Wayne Holloway-Smith, with guest readers John Clegg, Chloe Stopa-Hunt and Jemma Borg. John Clegg will be reading poems by J.H. Prynne (read John’s tribute to the poet as published in this issue of The Poetry Review). We will also be screening an exclusive recording from Major Jackson, and the winning poem of this year’s Dearmer Prize. 

And if you are booking for this event, don’t forget to take a look at our Poetry Review Reading Group events too, online and in-person!

Jemma Borg’s second collection, Wilder (2022), was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and was a Laurel Prize winner.

John Clegg is arguably London’s most beloved poetry bookseller. In 2013 he was awarded an Eric Gregory Prize. His collection Holy Toledo! (2016) was shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Prize. His most recent publication is Aliquot (2022).

Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023). His forthcoming cookbook, A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, will be published in October 2026.  An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. 

Chloe Stopa-Hunt is a British poet and critic. She is the author of White Hills (2016) and lives near Oxford.