the87press presents an evening of poetry and literature from Luke Williams & Natasha Soobramanien, Gita Ralleigh, Chloe Proctor, and Jordan Blanchard
Doors: 6.30 pm
Tickets: £7.50 - £10 (tiered)
The Horse Hospital welcomes the87press for their first event of the year. the87press (est. 2018) is a South-Asian, Non-Binary, and Neurodiverse-led independent publisher based in South London. Known for their commitment to experimental literatures across the intersections of class, race, neurodiversity, sexuality, and gender, the87press have been awarded National Portfolio status for 2023-2026 which will see them publish 10 books a year and host multiple medium to large scale readings. The Tea, a new installment in this events timeline, brings together poetry and fiction for a Saturday afternoon.
The line up is:
Luke Williams/Natasha Soobramanien
Gita Ralleigh
Chloe Proctor
Jordan Blanchard
Natasha Soobramanien, British-Mauritian, and Luke Williams, Scottish, are the authors of Genie and Paul and The Echo Chamber, respectively. They used to live in Edinburgh but Natasha now lives in Brussels and Luke in Cove. Their novel Diego Garcia (Fitzcarraldo) won the Goldsmiths Prize 2022.
Jordan Blanchard is a poet who writes for her folks back home. Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, her work is an homage to mess of the bayou. In 2021, Jordan earned her Bachelor’s of Art Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Westminster, London. She received her first MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London in 2022. Her work has been published in Crashtest Magazine, the Kenyon College Anthology, Wired the Zine, UMBRA and the online companion, UMBRAT. She is currently studying for her second masters at the University of the Arts London. Her first collection, river muck, baby is restocking soon.
Gita Ralleigh is a poet, writer and doctor born to Indian immigrant parents in London. She has been published by Wasafiri, Bellevue Literary Review, Magma Poetry and The Rialto among others. She teaches creative writing to science undergraduates at Imperial College and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck and an MSc in Medical Humanities. Her poetry debut was A Terrible Thing (Bad Betty Press, 2020) and her recent pamphlet is Siren (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). She is a London Library Emerging Writer for 2022-2023, a member of the Kinara poetry collective and a trustee at Spread The Word.
Chloë Proctor is a London-Irish mulchy poet and massage therapist. Her work grapples with generating grammar ecologies and with exploring alternative patterns of sense making. Her debut collection Terra Forming is out with Broken Sleep Books. She was a poet in residence as part of Can Serrat's Narrativa Colectiva residency in Barcelona, January 2023. She is a former member of The Crested Tit Collective and the former Assistant Editor of The Babel Tower Notice Board. She graduated from Royal Holloway's Poetic Practice MA programme in 2021.