Housmans Poetry Series: James Byrne

About this event

Join us for another evening of cutting edge poetry. For this instalment, we are delighted to welcome the legendary James Byrne to the shop to launch his latest collection The Banality of Power (Broken Sleep Books, 2026) Joining him we have the incredible Ziba Karbassi and are delight to welcome back long time friend of Housmans Stephen Watts. Our Poets: Ziba Karbassi—born in Tabriz, northwestern Iran in 1969—began writing poems from an early age. Her first book in Persian was published in her twenties and, since then, she has published regularly, with more than twelve books now available, both in her mother tongue and internationally. Forced to leave Iran in the early 1980s with her mother and younger sisters, she has since lived most of her life in London. She is widely regarded as one of the leading poets currently writing in Persian and, to date, her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. Karbassi’s densely revolutionary lyrical writing achieves an intensity of space that is almost unique in contemporary poetry, melting the valencies of breath into the depths of meaning. She has performed her work widely across Europe and America.