We don’t often celebrate World Poetry Day – 21 March – in style, but, thanks to literati mover and shaker Tom Branfoot, this year we can! Put on your best metonymy and fancy univocalic and get ready to shake your assonance as experimental / hybrid writing takes centre stage at one-off event a tenuous line, a lot of feelings.

Manchester regular Poets & Players is a must-go for lovers of words as well as music, presenting performers both established and emerging, with the latest readers Imtiaz Dharker, Ella Frears and Martin Zarrop. The music this month comes courtesy Natalie Sharp.

Celebrating the Spring 2025 issue, PN Review is hosting a special live reading event featuring Stav Poleg, Philip Terry and others, taking place at Castlefield Gallery on 3 April.

To celebrate this year’s Record Store Day, ten writers have teamed up with musicians for Sleeve Notes, a unique collaborative performance response creating new writing and music. Save the date – 12 April.

For the first time ever, Ferlinghetti Day will be celebrated here in the UK, marking the poet, artist, publisher and anarchist’s birthday, on 24 March.

Lancaster Literature Festival, or Litfest to its friends, is rolling out its 46th programme, having brought events to its audiences since 1978. For 2025, the main festival runs 7 to 17 March.

We’re looking forward to the launch of Dane Holt’s debut poetry collection Father’s Father’s Father, just published by Manchester’s Carcanet Press and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation Spring 2025. Dane will be chatting to Caroline Bird on 26 March, and you can join in wherever you are.

Launching her shiny new volume of selected poems in Liverpool, where much of it was dreamed up, Eleanor Rees will be reading live and also chatting about the production and processes involved with her publisher Luke Thompson and fellow poet Dr Pauline Rowe.

Organised by the brilliant poetry talent that is Kimberly Campanello, this showcase brings together eight-minute poetry experiments by ten writers, which is amazing value for money – especially as it’s completely free. Everyone is welcome, and we urge you are welcomed – this is one top line-up.

Manchester’s live literature scene has been awash with amazing visiting poets this spring and for this free afternoon of absurd surreal poetry, we are agog to see Vik Shirley, Stephen Emmerson and Marcus Silcock corralled by Tom Jenks and reading in a place packed with brilliant books.

Manchester is big on languages (see the new Manchester Multilingual City Poets for starters) and the annual Manchester Translation Series is back this March for a third time, taking place over three days at Manchester Poetry Library.

Described as “gripping and life-affirming”, Naomi Booth’s latest novel, raw content, is set during an atmospheric Yorkshire winter, and the dark, tender and troubled story of a young mother afflicted by compulsive thoughts. She’s in conversation with Terri White on 3 April.

Throughout 2025, the team at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House is taking a deep dive into Ruth, one of the famous 19th-century author’s most shocking texts.

Throughout 2025, Elizabeth Gaskell’s House is celebrating its tenth anniversary, having first opened to the public a decade ago. From a close brush with dereliction to being awarded official accredited museum status in August 2024, it’s been an important decade in the building’s almost 200-year history.

Beatification is back, and it’s headed south to Wythenshawe Forum Library with six guest readers and an open mic on 17 March.