Poetry reading with the87press

Join a.p. and the87press for an evening of poetry readings, with Sarona Abuaker, Kat Addis, Danny Hayward, Kashif Sharma-Patel, and Azad Ashim Sharma, who will read from their current and forthcoming publications published by the87press. Across the 5 poets’ work, a radical trajectory is charted, spanning form, genre, and content, yet united by a relentless drive towards experimentation.

Sarona Abuaker is a poet, artist, and educational outreach worker. Her poems have been published in Berfrois, MAP Magazine, and the87press’ Digital Poetics series. Her mixed-media essay Suture Fragmentations – A Note on Return was published in December 2020 with KOHL: A Journal for Body and Gender Research. She is based in London. Why so few women on the street at night is her debut collection (the87press, 2021).

Kat Addis is an artist and PhD candidate (at NYU) in renaissance literature, currently writing a dissertation about slavery and race in early modern European epics. Space Parsley (the87press, 2021) is Kat’s first full-length book of poetry. Previous poems have been published in The Chicago Review, ZARF, Tears in the Fence, Stand Magazine, and PELT vol. 4: Feminist Temporalities, a publication by the Organism for Poetic Research. Kat makes experimental costumes and fabric installations which have appeared recently in the Devil’s Dyke Network’s Pleasure Garden Festival, performance art by Sophie Seita, music video by Dominic Sen, and [Space] Gallery in London. Kat also makes poetry/video art, often collaboratively with Joseph Minden, which has been shown by Urban Foxes Collective, London, NYMASA, New York, and Puderraum, Berlin.

Danny Hayward writes poetry and criticms. He is the author of People (Mountain, 2013), Pragmatic Sanction (Materials, 2015), and I/II (Shit Valley, 2017). He maintains the archive-in-progress www.pxxtry.com, and along with many dozens of others co-runs the communist events series No Money. A book of poetry criticism, Wound Building, is available for free at punctum press. His poetry is archived along with works by other current practitioners at the poetry archive Free Trials.

Azad Ashim Sharma is based in South London. He is the director of the87press. His work includes Against the Frame (Barque Press, 2017), the recent collection of poetry and prose Ergastulum (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) and forthcoming Boiled Owls (forthcoming). A 5th anniversary edition of Against the Frame is planned for 2022 release by Broken Sleep Books and will feature new poems. Azad’s poetry has been published by Stand Magazine, the Asian American Writers Workshop, Gutter Magazine and Small Press Traffic. His prose has been published by SPAMzine, M.I.R. Online, Magma Magazine and is forthcoming in the Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Poetry in Ireland and the UK. Azad is currently a PhD Candidate in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London and is producing a novel and a book of critical theory.

Kashif Sharma-Patel is a writer, poet and editor at the87press. They work at the interface of sonic, visual, and written cultures with particular reference to queer and racialised experimental work. Pamphlets include relief I willed it (Gong Farm, 2021), fragments on mutability (Earthbound Press, 2020), and Suburban Finesse co-authored with Ashwani Sharma and Azad Ashim Sharma (Sad Press, 2021). Kashif has also written music, art and literary criticism for Artforum, Wire Magazine, The Quietus, AQNB, and more.