Inspire Poetry Festival: Desert Island Poems with Daljit Nagra

Join us at West Bridgford Library for a wonderful evening of poetry, as acclaimed poet and BBC radio presenter Daljit Nagra MBE shares his desert island poems in conversation with the Library Director of Bromley House Library Clare Brown, before reading from his own award-winning work. 

About Daljit Nagra  

Daljit Nagra has a Sikh-Indian heritage and was born and grew up in West London then Sheffield. He is Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, is on the Council of The Society of Authors, is Adviser to Poetry By Heart, and is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Brunel University where he teaches. He has published four poetry collections, all with Faber and Faber, including Look, We Have Coming to Dover! which is one of Faber and Faber’s iconic books of the past 90 years. He has won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award, the Cholmondeley Award, and the Royal Society of Arts Travelling Scholarship. His books have been nominated for the Costa Prize and twice for the TS Eliot Prize. He has been selected as a New Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society.

As the inaugural Poet-in-Residence for Radio 4 and 4 Extra, he presents the weekly programme, Poetry Extra, on Radio 4 Extra. He has judged many prizes including The Samuel Johnson Prize, The TS Eliot Prize, The Costa Prize, and the David Cohen Prize. His poems have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry Chicago, The LRB, The TLS and The New Statesman. He has written for The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Times of India. His poems are set texts at GCSE and A Level. He is an honorary fellow at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, and at Queen Mary University of London. He is a member of the European Alliance of Academies.

Daljit Nagra: Award-Winning British Poet & Broadcaster

About Clare Brown

Clare Brown’s professional background is in arts management, initially working in theatre before becoming Director of the Poetry Book Society (PBS) in 1996. Running the PBS enabled her to develop her passion for reading poetry, started in childhood, particularly when organising the annual TS Eliot Prize readings and award ceremony. She left the organisation and moved to Nottingham in 2003, at around the time Daljit Nagra won the first Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice Award. She has two novels published with Bloomsbury in the UK and one with Hachette in France, and freelanced for several years as a writer, consultant and workshop leader until joining Inspire Libraries’ Culture team in 2016. She has been Library Director of Bromley House Library since September 2022.