Wirral Festival of Firsts is inviting poets to sign up to perform at the Poetry Proms, which have relocated this year from Hoylake to New Brighton, on Saturday 6 July. Organisers say there will be lots of performance opportunities at a number of venues, including the Fort Perch Rock, and the newly-built performance "amphitheatre" in the heart of the town. For more details, or to register as a performer on the day, email mailfordjc@gmail.com and nikkibennett27@hotmail.com.

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The Frogmore Papers poetry magazine will be celebrating its 30th anniversary in May with events in Brighton, London and Folkestone. Readers at the New Venture theatre, Brighton on Sunday 5 May will include Maria Jastrzebska, John McCullough and Michaela Ridgeway.  On Wednesday 15 May John MacKay, Abegail Morley, Jeremy Worman and Tamar Yoseloff will read at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden.  On Saturday 18 May Frogmore founders André Evans and Jeremy Page will read from the first issue on the Lower Sandgate Road, Folkestone, a short hop from the site of the tea rooms where The Frogmore Papers was founded. 

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Lemn Sissay will be returning to Huddersfield University in the summer to speak at the Diamond Jubilee lecture theatre. His last public lecture and poetry recital in Huddersfield in 2010, titled Wireless and Looking for Reception, was about growing up in the care system and had the audience captivated and moved. His lecture later this year will be on 10 July.