Brian Bilston: How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside

Brian Bilston is playing The North Wall Arts Centre on Saturday 31 October, with a second date on Wednesday 18 November. Both start at 7.30pm. The show is built around his latest book, How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside, and he's billed it as an evening of comedy that walks the audience through the hows, whys and whats of reading, writing and enjoying poetry every day.

If you've come across Bilston's work before, you'll know he's one of the UK's most popular poets, with more than 500,000 followers on social media and a string of sell-out shows across the country. He's published several bestselling collections, including You Took the Last Bus Home, Alexa, what is there to know about love? and Days Like These, and he's written poetry for younger readers too. His novel Diary of a Somebody was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.

Last year he stepped into music, releasing Sounds Made by Humans in 2025, an album of his poetry set to music with The Catenary Wires. This show returns to the page, though. It takes How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside as its starting point and works its way out from there, treating poetry as something to be lived with rather than just read. The comedy comes through in the way he talks about it, so it's as much about the act of writing as it is about the poems themselves.

Tickets are £21.50 standard, with a 'Pay More' option at £25.50 and a 'Pay Less' one at £17. The North Wall is on South Parade in Oxford, OX2 7JN. Age guidance is 14+ as the show contains strong language.