Poetry at the Dusty Miller

Since its first outing in December 2023, Calder Valley reading series Poetry at the Dusty Miller (in the Coiners’ Room in the Mytholmroyd pub) has been inviting three or four guests to read each month, gathering 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 Tom Branfoot, Nigel King and Clare Shaw.

Tom Branfoot is a writer from Bradford, and the writer-in-residence at Manchester Cathedral. He won a Northern Debut Award for Poetry in 2024 and the New Poets Prize 2022. He organises the poetry reading series More Song in Bradford. He is the author of This Is Not an Epiphany (Smith|Doorstop) and boar (Broken Sleep Books), both published in 2023.

Nigel King writes about history, landscapes, space, art “and whatever else his mind drifts to”. Originally from Essex, he now lives in Huddersfield, where he is a member of the ever-supportive Albert Poets group. He has had poems published in magazines including Ink, Sweat & Tears, The High Window, Algebra of Owls and Pennine Platform. His debut pamphlet, What I Love About Daleks, was published by Calder Valley Poetry in 2017. He is currently working for an MA in Creative Writing at MMU.

Calder Valley-based Clare Shaw (they/them) has four poetry collections with Bloodaxe. Their latest collection Towards a General Theory of Love (2022) is a poetic exploration of love and love’s absence: it won a Northern Writer’s Award and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year 2022. They run workshops for a range of organisations including Wordsworth Grasmere, the Royal Literary Fund and the Arvon Foundation. They are instrumental in the campaign to Save and Restore Walshaw Moor and are currently co-editing a Walshaw Moor anthology to be published by Little Toller in September 2025, and organising a Wuthering Heights mass dance-off on the Haworth moors.

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).

The next Poetry at the Dusty Miller will take place on Tuesday 3 June, when our very own Literature Editor is on the bill, reading from her new pamphlet Wanderland (Red Ceilings Press), alongside Sarah Corbett, launching her new book The Ishtar Gate, out on Pavilion/Liverpool University Press, and Mytholmroyd-based poet Winston Plowes.