Well Versed is part of StAnza Poetry Festival. It is an exciting programme of online poetry discussions with headline festival poets and new voices, hosted in partnership with Open Book. Each session includes a reading and discussion before a Q&A with the live online audience.

For those unable to take part live, recordings of the sessions will be uploaded and available to watch for the duration of the year on our YouTube channel.

We are delighted to be working with Open Book again as partners for Well Versed 2025. Open Book will be organising events surrounding the Well Versed programme, including relaxed and informal shared reading sessions and creative writing workshops.

Get Well Versed by joining us for a poetry reading and chat with Nick Makoha!

In this event, we welcome poet Nick Makoha to share some poems, have a chat, and give you a chance to ask questions as part of our Well Versed series in partnership with StAnza International Poetry Festival.

Dr Nick Makoha is a Ugandan poet and playwright based in London and founder of Obsidian Foundation. His new collection is The New Carthaginians, (Penguin 2025). Winner of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. His poems have appeared in Poetry, the Cambridge Review, the New York Times, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly Review, 5 Dials, Boston Review, Callaloo, Birmingham Lit Journal and Wasafiri. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL).