Saturday 17 October 2026, 7.30pm
Join the87press for Mushaira, an evening of poetry, music, and community. Rooted in the South Asian tradition of shared verse and gathering, Mushaira is a live literature series celebrating unique and emerging poetic voices.
With readings by Roger Robinson, Anthony V. Capildeo, Perla Kantarjian, Tom Branfoot, Maya Caspari, and Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay.
This evening celebrates the publication of three poetry collections—Volatile, the debut collection by northern poet Tom Branfoot, You Must Become Field, the debut collection by Lebanese-American poet Perla Kantarjian, and Some Sacred Harbour by prize-winning poet and musician Roger Robinson.
DJ Jimmy Two Shoes will warm up the dancefloor and Chef Yogi’s pop up kitchen will be serving up Sri Lankan cuisine.
To help the chef prepare and minimise food waste, please purchase your tickets as soon as possible. All meals will range from £10-£15 with smaller snack options also
Established in 2018, the87press is an Asian, LGBTQIA+, and neurodiverse led publishing collective and events curator in South London. We prioritize modernism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and environmentalism in our print publications of poetry, fiction, and essays. Additionally, we offer educational and creative workshops, industry leading live events, and regular commissioned work with online journal of culture theHythe. Committed to equity, all authors receive fair contracts regardless of their background. As part of Arts Council England's National Portfolio, we contribute to the Let's Create project and look forward to fostering inclusive learning spaces as the only NPO in the London Borough of Sutton.
Perla Kantarjian is a Lebanese-Armenian writer with recent work in Mizna, Electric Literature, Wasafiri, The Rumpus, and Black Warrior Review. Longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, Kantarjian is Pushcart Prize nominated and has garnered recognition from the Southbank Centre, The Poetry Society, Palette Poetry, and more. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was selected as Sonny Mehta Scholar. Her debut poetry collection, You Must Become Field, is forthcoming from Bad Betty Press in 2026.
Maya Caspari is a writer, researcher, and curator. Her poetry pamphlet Almost, with Tenderness was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2025. She has been highly commended in the Forward Prizes, longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her work has appeared in magazines including Poetry Review, Propel, Wasafiri and Ambit. She is a Lecturer at the University of York - her monograph on memory, resistance, and the politics of touch will be published in 2027.
Roger Robinson won the T.S. Eliot Prize (2019), the RSL Ondaatje Prize (2020) and the Cholmondeley Award (2024). He is a Royal Society of Literature Fellow and has been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, the OCM Bocas Poetry Prize, the Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, and the European Prize for Freedom.
His collection A Portable Paradise was named a New Statesman Book of the Year. His book Home Is Not a Place, created in collaboration with Johny Pitts, was a Guardian Poetry Book of the Year and shortlisted for the British Book Awards. He has also been a collaborator with the artist Hurvin Anderson on his monograph published by Rizzoli in 2022
Tom Branfoot is a poet and critic from Bradford. He won a Northern Writers' Award in 2024 and the New Poets Prize 2022. He organises the poetry reading series More Song in Bradford. Tom is the author of This Is Not an Epiphany (Smith|Doorstop) and boar (Broken Sleep Books), both published in 2023. His poem ‘A Parliament of Jets’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2025. Volatile is his debut collection.
Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay is an Indian-born epic poem collage stranger and break-up with America tour—on self-imposed exile from New Nashville, and the author of the books this is our war (Penmanship Press, Brooklyn, 2016) and everything is always leaving (M.C. Sarkar & Sons, Kolkata, 2019), and poetry album i don’t know anyone here (2020). She was the first Nashville Youth Poet Laureate, finalist for the first National Youth Poet Laureate, and Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. With a Masters’ in Migration and Diaspora at SOAS and a Masters’ in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, find her work in Poetry Society of America, La Piccioletta Barca, and Cream City Review, among others. Her latest book Towards a Poetic Memory of Bengal Partition was out with Natyachinta in December 2023. She is the poet-in-residence with JAWARI.
Trinidadian Scottish writer Anthony V. Capildeo FRSL has published seventeen poetry titles and one volume of non-fiction, Masqueraders: Selected Essays (Carcanet, 2026). Their work draws on research and influences ranging from Old Norse to Caribbean traditional masquerade. Capildeo is Writer in Residence and Professor at the University of York, an Honorary Student of Christ Church, Oxford, and a Lay Dominican with the Edinburgh fraternity. Capildeo believes that a fossil fuel-free, genocide-free books industry is possible.
Forever a humble student of the dancefloor, Jimmy Two Shoes is inspired by music and its capacity for creating those magical moments. As a Subtle Radio resident and multi-genre label boss of Sub Merchants, Jwarn seamlessly navigates an array of bass-infused flavors, delivering the flows to wriggle your toes to.
