Dead [Women] Poets Society turns 10 - with Joelle Taylor & Mary Jean Chan

llustrations by Lily Arnold

Hello ghost lovers!

Back in 2015, four young members of The Writing Squad were invited to come up with and run an event for Durham Book Festival.

What if, we thought, instead of reading our own poems, we read poems by dead women poets? And what if we made it... spooky?

Ten years after that sold-out event in Durham's Empty Shop (RIP), we've now resurrected 37 dead women poets, working with 34 living women and non-binary poet-necromancers. We ran an Arts Council England funded UK tour, made a zine fundraising for Sisters Uncut, guest-edited an issue of Modern Poetry in Translation and have been invited to resurrect dead women poets at four different literature festivals - all to highlight the lineage of our great-great-great-grandmothers that has been intentionally erased through history. And have fun, of course.

This year, we're thrilled to be back with our biggest séance yet, featuring the inimitable Joelle Taylor and Mary Jean Chan at Winchester Poetry Festival, on Saturday 11 October. These resurrectors will commune with the spirits of Adrienne Rich, the legendary lesbian poet and thinker, and Bing Xin 冰心, one of the most prolific Chinese women writers of the 20th century.

This is an absolute dream line-up for us, and we hope you'll join us in Winchester for 10th birthday resurrection. Book your tickets here and tell your friends!

Check out the rest of the Winchester Poetry Festival programme here - it's brilliant, and our resident artist Lily Arnold has illustrated all the poets involved gorgeously in the traditional Dead [Women] Poets Society style.

If you can't make it, remember that we have a whole host of amazing materials in our archive, highlighting the life and works of poets like Lucille Clifton, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Lesia Ukrainka, Anna Wickham and more - written by writers like Warda Yassin, Nina Mingya Powles, Charlotte Shevchenko-Knight, Caroline Bird and others. Why not choose our 10th birthday as the perfect moment to explore our archive and share poems by your favourite dead women poets? Tag us on Instagram @dead_women_poets_soc - let's make 2025 the year of the dead woman poet.

Finally, we want to say a big thank you to you, ghoulish reader, because we couldn't have done any of this without you. From that very first sold-out event through to all our most recent séances, we've had so much support from audiences up and down the UK (and internationally!). We're endlessly grateful for your interest in our work, so please give yourself a big pat on the back and a thank you from the Dead [Women] Poets Society team.

See you out there, spooky friends.

Join the 10th birthday séance