Bad Betty Live November

Bad Betty Press are back with another live night at New Art Exchange on Friday 20 November, part of the venue's Friday Night Socials. It's a poetry and music bill hosted by Georgina Wilding and Jake Wild Hall, with the poetry side of things handled by Rachel Long, Ty'rone Haughton, Aaron Kent, Mandisa Apena and Zoë McWhinney. Umbilica takes the music slot, and the whole evening is BSL interpreted by Steph Lehrle.

There's a fair bit of ground covered in that line-up. Rachel Long's debut collection, My Darling from the Lions (2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Rathbones Folio Prize. Zoë McWhinney made history as the first Deaf poet published in British Sign Language in Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. Umbilica (she/they) is a queer poet, songcrafter and musician whose chapbooks were published by Big White Shed and who plays in the dream-pop band Grawl!x.

Bad Betty Press itself is an award-winning independent poetry publisher and curator of live literature events, London-born and Nottingham-based, set up in 2017 to showcase risk-taking poetry and celebrate stories less often told. It's the parent of the pamphlet imprint Little Betty and won the Michael Marks Publishers' Award in 2022. The night is one of their regular live events, and a digital transcript of the poems and lyrics is available to download at the start of the evening.

It runs from 6:30pm to 9:30pm in the Performance Space on the first floor of New Art Exchange, 41 Gregory Boulevard, NG7 6BE. Tickets start at £7.21.