Speaker: Luke Kennard
Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist who lives in Birmingham. He won an Eric Gregory award for his poetry in 2005. His second book of poems The Harbour Beyond the Movie (Salt, 2007) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, making him the youngest poet to be nominated in the prize’s history. His 5th collection, Cain (Penned in the Margins, 2016), was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2017. His first novel, The Transition (4th Estate), longlisted for the Desmond Elliott award, was published in 2017 and his second, The Answer to Everything (Harper Collins) was published in 2021. Notes on the Sonnets, a sequence of 154 prose poems in response to Shakespeare’s sonnets was published by Penned in the Margins in 2021 and won the Forward Prize for Best Collection that year. He lectures in the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.
Luke will hold a poetry workshop in societies hour, before judging the Bentley Elocution Final at 7.30pm in the Barnes Theatre.