Rainham Poetry Festival 2026
Come join us for a two-day festival of poetry, with special guest, Lemn Sissay.​​
St Margaret's Church
High St
Rainham
Kent
ME8 8AN​​
The Festival is free for both days. Please reserve your ticket(s) by clicking on the BOOK TICKETS above which will secure your Eventbrite place.
Fri 5 June - Sat 6 June 2026
About the Festival
The Rainham Poetry Festival brings together local, national and international voices, each bearing their own distinctive message.
New writers mix with celebrated poets, to present their work, at St Margaret's Rainham on Watling Street - the old Roman road connecting London and the whole of Britain with the Channel Ports and Europe beyond.
And here in this church we will reflect on the power of poetry to transform our world. ​
Friday 5 June 6pm
6:00 pm Rev Nathan Ward - Introduction
Nathan - the vicar of Rainham - will start the evening with a welcome and talk about what art and poetry can mean for a community
6:05 pm Bill Lewis - The Rainham Anthology launch
Bill Lewis introduces the anthology "Beyond the Acorn Door", a compilation of poets from across the world selected by Bill Lewis himself. He will read some of the poems included.
6:20 pm Philip Kane
An evening of surrealism with Kent-based Philip Kane , a member of the London Surrealist Group. His previous books include The Wildwood King, Unauthorised Person, and Dramatis Personae. Philip's work has also been widely published in journals and anthologies.
6:50 pm Nathaniel Oguns
Nathaniel Oguns brings again to the festival his Kent Dreams project, hosting an open mic session welcoming new poets and spoken word voices.
7:35 pm Break for 15 minutes
7:50 pm Wolf Howard
Poet, painter, photographer and drummer, Wolf Howard, will read us a selection of his poems. He has played in local bands. He has published several collections, including Journals of a jobseeker (2003), Sadness sits waiting in the strangest of places (2007), When tramps wore suits (2018), and A Queue for Nothing.
8:10 pm Gabriel Moreno
Goat Star Books is pleased to present their latest publication, Gibraltar. We invite you to an evening of music and poetry with Gibraltarian poet and singer-songwriter Gabriel Moreno, who will be accompanied by his band, The Quivering Poets. Gabriel was previously the longtime curator and host of the legendary Lantern Society folk club, in London, and in 2022 was awarded the title of Cultural Ambassador of Gibraltar. He has published ten poetry books.
9:00 pm Wrap
Saturday 6 June 2:00 pm
2:00 pm Rev Nathan Ward
Rev Nathan Ward Introduces Day 2 followed by a session of reading and poetry with and for children, the young - and the young-at-heart.
2:40 pm Theresa Lola
Theresa Lola is an award-winning British Nigerian poet who will read a selection of her poetry. Lola's debut full-length poetry collection In Search of Equilibrium was described by Pascale Petit as a "glorious hymn to being alive and wounded". Theresa’s second collection, Ceremony for the Nameless, explores the relationship between names, naming, and identity. The collection won the 2025 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry and received praise from critics.
3:20 pm Maggie Harris
Guyanese poet, prose writer, and visual artist Maggie Harris will join us to read poems from her latest book I Sing to the Greenhearts. She was awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2000 and 2014 for her collections of poetry Limbolands and Sixty Years of Loving, respectively. She also received the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region in 2014 for Sending for Chantal. Among her other books are, Kiskadee Girl and On Watching A Lemon Sail The Sea.
3:40 pm Rob Earl
We are pleased to have Rob Earl with us this year. He was one of the original "Medway Poets" - that group founded in the ambition and the energy of the music scene in the late 1970s. Originally known - like the rest of his group - as a performance poet, over the years his style has become no less distinctive. He says 'Some of my work can be rather 'strong'. But I’ll find some suitable pieces that are both energetic and apposite for the church this June'
3:55 pm Break for 15mins
4:10 pm Sarah Hehir
Sarah Hehir's background in writing has taken her from the Radio 4 soap 'The Archers', to experimental theatre. She won the inaugural BBC Writer’s Prize for her drama 'Bang Up'. Her poetry is gathered from her life teaching in a Young Offenders Institute, and as a mother. She says her work is powered by "honest fury and reckless optimism". In 2016, her TV drama The Seafort was selected for the BBC TV Drama Writers’ Programme.
4:30pm Paul Jackson
Paul Jackson was a British video game producer and publisher. Paul has swapped his enthusiasm for video to writing and poetry. He's always been a keen reader. But in the past few years, he's picked up his pen to produce thoughtful, observational verse reflecting his part of Kent and the issues of his generation. His heart is in the Medway Towns, and his love for Gillingham FC sees him on the terraces at Priestfield most Home Saturdays. He will talk about the new Rainham Anthology of poetry - Beyond the Acorn Door.
4:55 pm Bill Lewis
The Rainham Poetry Festival is pleased to include the launch of Bill Lewis’s new book, Updating, a bilingual English/Spanish anthology of the work of one of Britain's finest poets, our own modern William Blake. Bill Lewis is an English artist, storyteller, poet, and mythographer. He was a founder-member of The Medway Poets and, later, also a member of the Stuckists art group. Bill has developed a language beyond that primæval explosion, writing a corpus of poetry that deals with the modern world from the point of view of a working-class poet who mixes mythologies old and new to interpret modern Britain and the world beyond.
5:10 pm Lemn Cissay
Our headliner this year is the great British poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay, who will be performing his new book Let the Light Pour In, a life-affirming collection of poems, witty and full of wonder. These poems chronicle his own battle with the dark, and are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy. Lemn Sissay was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics. He was also the Chancellor of the University of Manchester from 2015 until 2022. He was awarded the 2019 PEN Pinter Prize. He has written a number of books and plays. His memoir, My Name Is Why, was published by Canongate in 2019.
6:15 pm Wrap and book signing
Saturday 7 June 3:30 pm
Evensong - followed by tea and cake
This 2026 edition of the Rainham Poetry Festival is brought to you by the Goat Star Books team.
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