Chelping returns for 2023 with its 20th installment, starring Clare Shaw and Nafeesa Hamid on Thursday 16 March! join us in the breathtaking 255-year-old The Leeds Library for one of the city’s leading poetry nights.

unfortunately, at the time of typing, all of the open mic slots have gone. apologies for any disappointment caused.

Clare Shaw’s first three collections with Bloodaxe were Straight Ahead (2006), Head On (2012), and Flood (2018). Their latest collection Towards a General Theory of Love won a Northern Writer’s Award and was published by Bloodaxe in May 2022. With a background in mental health and education, Clare is a keen advocate for writing as a tool of social and personal change and through multiple projects, they are actively committed to engaging wider audiences with poetry. Clare also writes for radio, and works with artists, musicians and composers. They wrote the libretto for the opera Daylighting which was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music and premiered in 2022.

Nafeesa Hamid is a writer, workshop facilitator, performer, and creative producer, active since 2012. She was born in Pakistan, bred in Birmingham. Her debut poetry collection Besharam (2018, Verve Poetry Press) was highly commended for the Forward Prizes 2019. She is subsequently published in the Forward Book of Poetry 2020 (2019, Faber Poetry), as well as Forward Poems of the Decade 2011-2020 (2021, Faber Poetry). She is also published in The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a (2017, Saqi Books) anthology edited by Sabrina Mahfouz.

Nafeesa was founder of Twisted Tongues Derby/ Birmingham and co-founder of Gully Collective/ Gully Zine. She is currently a Rifco Theatre associate artist developing new monologues for stage.