The European Poetry Festival is the biggest consistent celebration of continental poetry in the UK. For nine years as a festival, and over fifteen years as an event series, over 1000 European poets have performed new collaborations across the British Isles. The festival celebrates, in the UK and beyond, the grand resurgence in avant-garde and literary poetry that has marked the 21st century across Europe and it aims to not only innovate what a live poetry experience might be, but to inculcate community and engagement between poets across the continent, as well as between new audiences and complex poetries. At the heart of this is our collaborative model, the Camarade events. Here pairs of poets, visiting or based in the UK, create brand new works for each event, free to create as they wish. Each event often features multiple pairings, and so our events become energised, engaging playgrounds for experimentation as well as friendships.
Our ninth festival takes place in summer 2026, June 17th to July 4th.
As well as our unique festivals and our standalone Camarade events, the EPF has also curated events beyond the UK, with Camarade events in Kosice, Bergen, Vienna, Ljubljana and other cities across Europe. The EPF is a mode of literature, commissioned by festivals across Europe for it’s pioneering collaborative and commission events.
Supported by Arts Council England, National Centre for Writing, National Poetry Library Southbank Centre, Austrian Cultural Forum, Pro Helvetia, Latvian Literature, Flanders Literature, Cypriot High Commission, Institut Ramon Llull, Manchester Poetry Library, Nordic Culture Fund, London Bookfair and over 40 international agencies and organisations, the festival is now long established as a feature of the UK’s live poetry culture.
The EPF is designed to be a showcase of not only live literature - that is performances of poetry tailored to the event setting, and not simply recitals of that which is marked upon the page - but new writing methodologies, most notably, as mentioned, collaboration. The festival also seizes upon a resurgent and vital interest in European culture in the UK, post-Brexit. Vitally, it also engages poets who are often on the margins of their own nations poetry culture, precisely because their work is forward looking and challenging. The EPF aspires to be a space in which difficult, multifaceted, layered poetry is presented in an open, welcoming, generous environment. The festival is about innovation as well as community, in that the more hospitable the happening, the more challenging the work on display is free to be.
The festivals was founded and is directed by SJ Fowler www.stevenjfowler.com
The origins of the European / Nordic Poetry Festival events
European Poetry Festival emerges from over seven years of European focused collaborative and innovative live poetry events through The Enemies Project and the curatorial work of SJ Fowler. International exchanges between poets in the UK and poets from Romania, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Croatia as well as commissioned events from Southbank Centre, Ledbury Festival, Essex Book Festival, Milosz Festival and many others, led to cross-European collaborative events beginning in 2015.
Find out more and watch all the works made for these nights below:
