Poetry at the Dusty Miller

Calder Valley reading series Poetry at the Dusty Miller invites three or four guests to read each month – and it hit 2025 running with a standing-room-only February date.

Since its first outing in December 2023, Poetry at the Dusty Miller (in the Coiners’ Room in the Mytholmroyd pub) has gathered considerable steam, with organisers Carola Luther and Judith Willson, both published by Manchester’s Carcanet Press, so far welcoming the likes of Lucy Burnett, Steve Ely, Rebecca Hurst, Tom Jenks, Andrew McMillan and Kim Moore, winner of the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. This month’s guests are Evan Jones, James Caruth and Zetta Bear.

Evan Jones is a Canadian poet who has lived in Manchester since 2005. He is the author of Men of the Same Name (2025) and Later Emperors (2020). His book of translations from Modern Greek, The Barbarians Arrive Today: Poetry and Prose of C.P. Cavafy (2020), was a TLS book of the year.

James Caruth was born in Belfast but has lived in Sheffield for over thirty years. His first collection A Stone’s Throw, was published by Staple in 2007. Dark Peak, a long sequence, was published by the fabulous Longbarrow Press in 2008. Two pamphlets followed with Smith Doorstop, Marking the Lambs (2010) and The Death of Narrative (2012), which was chosen by Carol Ann Duffy as a winner of the International Book and Pamphlet Competition. A further pamphlet, Narrow Water, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2017. A second full collection Speechless at Inch was published by Smith Doorstop in 2021 and was shortlisted for The Derek Walcott Prize.

Zetta Bear’s poems have appeared in various magazines, and have been read on Radio 4. She is interested in how transpersonal experience and the sublime are accessed through our most visceral connections with nature – in our relationship with non-human animals, in hunting, in eating and in immersion in raw natural environments. Having worked for many years as a psychospiritual therapist, she now earns her living as a funeral celebrant with a sideline in book binding. She lives on a hill, with dogs.

The organisers of Poetry at the Dusty Miller say just turn up, no booking is necessary and all are welcome. The event is free, with a hat passed around at the end of the evening to contribute towards the performing poets’ travel expenses, and there will also be books for sale – so remember to bring some readies. Getting there is not too difficult, with a bus stop outside and Mytholmroyd Railway Station a five-minute walk (and regular trains from Victoria if you’re heading over from Manchester).