The Poetry Society is delighted to present the launch readings for the Autumn 2025 issue of The Poetry Review, edited by Wayne Holloway-Smith, with guest readers Safa Khatib (video), Matthew Dickman, Joelle Taylor, Claudine Toutoungi and Safia Elhillo (video).

Joelle Taylor (photo: Roman Manfredi), Safa Khatib, Matthew Dickman, Claudine Toutoungi and Safia Elhillo (photo: Avia Theotokato)

Reader bios:

Safa Khatib is the author of A Dress of Locusts (Bloomsbury 2025).

Joelle Taylor is the author of five poetry collections and one novel. In 2022 her collection C+NTO & Othered Poems was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Polari Prize for LGBT books.

Matthew Dickman is the author of Husbandry, Wonderland, Mayakovsky’s Revolver and All-American Poem, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize.

Claudine Toutoungi is a poet and playwright, whose collections with Carcanet are Smoothie, Two Tongues (Winner -2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize) and Emotional Support Horse. 

Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. She is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Girls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2022), and the novels in verse Home Is Not a Country and Bright Red Fruit (Make Me a World/Random House, 2021 and 2024). With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019). She lives in Los Angeles.

Please note that The Poetry Review is intended for an adult audience and the poems read may contain challenging language and/or imagery that some readers might find distressing.