Emma Conally-Barklem, Testament, Saju Ahmed, Emily Zobel Marshall and Antony Dunn read work shaped by the North’s bricks and becks.

Emma Conally-Barklem

Emma Conally-Barklem is an author, poet, creative writing facilitator and yoga teacher based in Yorkshire. In 2023, she was New Northern Poet for Ilkley Literature Festival. She curated her first poetry collection ‘The Ridings’ into a photography and poetry exhibition based on her own family life, ‘The Ridings: Bradford Working-Class Family Life, Loss & Landscape: 1970’s-1990’s’ at South Square Gallery in her hometown of Bradford. ‘Hymns from the Sisters’ was written after a residency at the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Emma won the Black in White Poetry Prize 2024. Her first novel, ‘Yoga Homicide’ was shortlisted for the 2024 Book Edit Writers’ Prize. Her third poetry collection ‘Emily Brontë’s Hawk’ will be published by The Black Cat Poetry Press in 2026.

Testament

Testament is a writer, rapper, educator and world-record breaking beatboxer.

Testament is writer of awards nominated play BLACK MEN WALKING(UK Theatre Awards, Writer’s Guild of Great Britain) and ORPHEUS IN THE RECORD SHOP which was broadcast on BBC Four TV.

Testament’s diverse work includes spoken word, composing music for award winning adverts, writing musicals, performing poetry at Downing Street, making radio history documentaries, nature essays and freestyle rapping for Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Testament has had numerous TV appearances on BBC, ITV and Sky Arts and has been the guest host on Radio 4poetry show The Verb twice. His poetic radio drama DAUGHTER won Special Commendation at the BBC Audiodrama Awards 2022and was nominated forthe Prix Europa.

He was 2019 Channel 4 Writer-in-Residence for THE ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE Manchester and was Black Nature Writer-in Residence for the Yorkshire Dales 2024, and part the HOT POETSeco-poetry collective.

As a facilitator, Testament runs the HIP-HOP CLINIC-a workshop that company that runs rap, poetry and beatbox workshops around the world.He has also worked with BBC Bitesize and presented GCSE Poetry podcasts.

Currently, he is a writer on the hit NETFLIX animated show CASTLEVANIA NOCTURNE.

Saju Ahmed

Saju is a Leeds-based spoken word poet and rapper of Bangladeshi and Irish heritage whose work confronts social issues and deconstructs stereotypes. He began writing in 2005 with Leeds Young Authors and represented the UK at the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam from 2006–2008, later coaching the team to 2nd place in 2009. A published poet and case study in Teach Like a Writer by Jennifer Webb, Saju has also featured on BBC 1Xtra Live Lounge and in the BBC short film series Present Tense. His poetry appeared in BBC 1Xtra: On the Ground, BBC Four’s Rhyme and Reason, and the documentaries We Are Poets and Dyslexia and Loving Words. He wrote and acted in Ode to Partition, exploring the impact of the 1947 partition of South Asia. Saju was also active in the Chicago peace movement, using art and activism to inspire change.

Emily Zobel Marshall

Emily Zobel Marshall is of French-Caribbean and British heritage and grew up in North Wales. She is Professorin Postcolonial Literature at Leeds Beckett University. Her research specialisms are the cultures and literatures of the African Diaspora, with a focus on the folkloric trickster figureand Caribbean carnival cultures,and she is widely published in thesefield. She has published two academic books, Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance(UWI Press, 2012) and American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit(Roman and Littlefield, 2019),and is Co-chair of the anti-racist charity the David Oluwale Memorial Association (DOMA). She develops creative work alongside her academic writing and her poetry collection,Bath of Herbs(2023), was published by Peepal Tree Press. Her forthcoming collection,Other Wild, will be published by Peepal Tree Press in Autumn 2025.

Antony Dunn

Antony Dunn has published four collections of poems, Pilots and Navigators (Oxford University Press), Flying Fish (Carcanet OxfordPoets), Bugs (Carcanet OxfordPoets) and Take This One to Bed (Valley Press).

Winner of the Newdigate Prize and an Eric Gregory Award, he edited and introduced Ex Libris, a posthumous collection of poems by David Hughes (Valley Press).

Antony is a regular tutor for The Poetry School and the Arvon Foundation. He has worked on a number of translation projects with poets from Holland, Hungary, Israel and China.

He has been Poet in Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival, the University of York and the People Powered Press. Until 2018 he was Artistic Director of the Bridlington Poetry Festival.

Antony lives in Leeds.

Please note: line up subject to change.