The National Poetry Centre’s Rubbish Words event takes place on 18 -20 October with the first hour each day designated quiet sessions to help make the event more accessible to the neurodivergent community.

Rubbish Words will run from 10am-4pm at Leeds Corn Exchange, with no background music playing for the first 60 minutes.

The event is for all ages and will see people come together using words from a variety of sources, such as magazines and posters, to create poems. It is free and people don’t have to come on all three days.

The collage poems will then be made into an artwork at the end of the project by Leeds-based artist George Storm Fletcher.

The found words poetry project is being led by poet Sarah Dawson who has a background in collaborative poetry performance and has performed at the European Poetry Festival four times.

“Everyone is welcome to unleash their creativity using recyclable materials such as magazines, old posters and theatre programmes,” explains Sarah.

“Together, we will transform the words we see around us every day into surprising new forms, which will be turned into an artwork.”
Rubbish Words is part of Poetry School’s ‘Summit Festival’, a landmark eco-poetry, nature and climate literature festival, which takes place on 19 October at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and 20 October at the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. The festival, which encompasses two days of readings, workshops, surgeries, and performances, includes the prestigious Laurel Prize ceremony.

The National Poetry Centre will be based in Leeds and bring people together from every community in every corner of the UK.
Rubbish Words is made possible thanks to funding from Leeds City Council’s Cultural Investment Programme Grow: Project strand and the University of Leeds.

*If you can’t make it to Leeds we’d still like to see your poems made from found words – perhaps taking inspiration from magazines and newspapers at home.

Please tag us with your poems Twitter/X @NatPoetryCentre & @nationalpoetrycentre on Instagram.