Sympoesia
Urgent. Unflinching. Words meet music.
Who’s on stage
Four poets. One orchestra. A night where poetry meets music in all its intensity, beauty and defiance. Joelle Taylor, Salena Godden, Anthony Anaxagorou and Jay Bernard bring their original writing to the stage alongside members of Royal Northern Sinfonia.
What they’re playing
Original poems, commissioned for the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes Festival, set to modern classical music. Words collide with strings, rhythms shift and voices find new force in the sound around them. From the haunting stillness of Messiaen to the restless pulse of Steve Reich, this is a meeting of artistic worlds that invites you to listen differently.
Sympoesia was originally commissioned and presented by Southbank Centre and London Sinfonietta for Multitudes Festival. The Glasshouse presentation is supported by New Writing North.
Need to know
Running time: 1 hour, without an interval.
Age: under 14s must be accompanied by an adult.
What you'll hear
Max Richter Europe, After the Rain
Olivier Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time – Movement 7
Courtney Bryan Elegy
Steve Reich Different Trains – During the War
Thomas Ades Arcadiana VI – O Albion
Who's playing it
Joelle Taylor
Salena Godden
Anthony Anaxagorou
Jay Bernard
Royal Northern Sinfonia
The poets
Joelle Taylor
Joelle Taylor is the author of four poetry collections and one novel. C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize, and is currently being adapted both for theatre and into a television screenplay. Her novel The Night Alphabet was named both a Spectator and Guardian Book of the Year. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a 2026 Society of Authors Cholmondeley Award recipient, and a former Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. She was recently honoured with a DIVA Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature and named in the 2026 Pride Power list. Her new collection Maryville is published by Bloomsbury.
Salena Godden
Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author and poet and broadcaster of mixed Jamaican-Irish heritage. Her work has been widely anthologised and broadcast on BBC Radio, TV and film and she consistently headlines at international poetry and book events and festivals.
Her 2021 debut novel, Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Award for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted at the British Book Awards and for the Gordon Burn Prize. Her highly anticipated second novel set in the Mrs Death Misses Death universe titled The Life Of Life will be published in March 2027 by Canongate Books.
Other recent books include the literary childhood memoir, Springfield Road and two poetry collections Pessimism is for Lightweights and With Love, Grief and Fury, which was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Readers Award and received a Special Commendation from the Poetry Book Society.
Her work has been highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize, and shortlisted in the 4thWrite Short Story Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, Jerwood Compton Foundation and the Bridport Poetry Prize. Some of Godden’s work has been added to the GSCE school syllabus, and there is a module studying Mrs Death Misses Death at the Open University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of Hastings Book Festival and an Honorary Fellow of West Dean, Sussex.
Jay Bernard
Jay Bernard is an interdisciplinary writer and artist whose work is rooted in sound, poetry and social history. Bernard was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2020 and won the 2017 Ted Hughes Award for debut collection Surge. Recent work includes Far from the Start, an audio installation at Studio Voltaire that reimagines the Windrush.
Anthony Anaxagorou
Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist and publisher. His collections have seen him win an RSL Ondaatje Prize, be shortlisted for a TS Eliot Prize, and featured on various book of the year lists. He’s an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the artistic director of Out-Spoken, the Southbank Centre’s resident poetry and live music night.
Royal Northern Sinfonia
Meet Royal Northern Sinfonia, the brilliant orchestra who call The Glasshouse home. They love sharing the joy of live music, bringing the familiar to the unexpected to life. For Sympoesia, their sound becomes part of the conversation, responding to the poets, opening up new perspectives and creating space for words to resonate.
