This National Poetry Day, the Young Poets Summit is celebrating Wonder with Out Loud: A Conversation on Performance and Poetry, bringing together poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem Performed to explore what makes performance poetry special. What is craft here?

For the Young Poets Summit, being part of National Poetry Day feels particularly important. The Summit initiative is about enabling young poets to engage and be exposed to all aspects of the poetry ecosystem, leading and contributing to the conversations that shape their experiences as poets.

That means creating opportunities for young poets to be in conversation with working artists, organisations and the wider poetry community, but also recognising that they already have something to say. It’s not lost on us that most of the poets on this year’s Best Performed Poem shortlist are young poets. In line with our motto of putting young poets in the driving seat, this National Poetry Day event will be chaired by Chloe Tenesha, a poet making waves across the poetry scene.

Poetry is expression, but it is also question. It gives us ways of experiencing, interrogating and translating the world – and of meeting other people’s worlds with greater empathy. At a time when so many of us are searching for language for what we are seeing, feeling and living through, there is something powerful about gathering to consider what poetry can hold, and what happens when we give those words voice.

National Poetry Day is a nationwide invitation to make, experience and share poetry. This year’s theme, Wonder, asks us to look again at the world around us. Out Loud celebrates the poets doing just that – and the young poets who will help shape where poetry goes next. Register here for this free online event at 7pm Thursday 1 October 2026.