Isabelle Baafi and Matthew Rice

Poetry Reading

Isabelle Baafi and Matthew Rice

Tuesday 28 July 2026 | 11:15am | £12.00

Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which won both the Forward Prize and the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and is longlisted for the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She edits at Poetry London and Magma.

Matthew Rice is from Belfast. His debut collection, The Last Weather Observer, was an Arts Council of Northern Ireland top ten books of the year pick in 2021. He is the Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow for 2026 at The Seamus Heaney Centre. His latest book is plastic, published with Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK/Europe) and Soft Skull Press (US).

Presented in association with Poetry Ireland