Dead [Women] Poets Haunt The London Library
- 20 hours ago
- 2 min read
Dead [Women] Poets Society is back from the dead, and this time - of course - we're haunting The London Library.
On Tuesday 10 November 2026, Sophie Herxheimer and Clare Pollard will commune with the spirits of Amy Levy and Christina Rossetti, two classic dead women poets of Victorian origin, whose family and friends walked through The London Library's stacks. And maybe they still do...
Clare will also be hosting a poetry workshop inspired by women poets of the past just before the event, and if you buy tickets to both, you can save 60%!
Our most ghoulish friends will know that Clare Pollard is a long-time friend of Dead [Women] Poets Society, who invited us to guest-edit Modern Poetry in Translation when she was their editor, and to resurrect at Winchester Poetry Festival when she was their director! She's a big proponent of reading and writing from women poets of the past - her latest book, fittingly, is Lives of the Female Poets and you can follow her read-alongs of writers like Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Meanwhile, Sophie Herxheimer is an incredible multidisciplinary poet and artist, and author of such wonderful titles as Velkom to Inklandt, exploring her grandmother's story of migration and language; 60 Lovers to Make and Do, pithy and occasionally heart-breaking poems that invite you to cut out (with scissors) said illustrated lovers; and INDEX, an exciting boxed deck of 78 prophetic collage poem cards. We just know this is going to be a dynamo pairing, and we can't wait to see what they have to say about their resurrectees.
The London Library has a fascinating history and has been used by women (and men) writers since its establishment in 1841. Well-known members and frequent borrowers have included Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter and Daphne du Maurier. And the current President - their first female President in 180 years - is the wonderfully spooky Helena Bonham Carter. It promises to be a thrilling, and/or chilling night.
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