The Villages Brewery reading is a chance for our touring poets to relax and do a low key reading. As well as dual-language recitals of poems from Legna’s book ‘A little body is many parts’ translated by Abigail and Serafina Vick, Abigail will be sharing some of her own work.

Legna and Abigail will be joined by Latino poets Leo Boix and Carlos Mauricio Rojas from the Invisible Presence programme, which was set up to nurture and develop talented young writers of Latin American background living in Britain. The young poets create work in Spanish, Portuguese and English to highlight the cultural richness of the Latino community and become a force in literature for the future. They value great writing and fiestas equally.

Leo Boix is a Latinx bilingual poet, translator and journalist born in Argentina who lives and works in the UK. Boix has published two poetry collections in Spanish, Un lugar propio (2015) and Mar de noche (2017), and has been included in many anthologies, such as Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe), Islands Are But Mountains: Contemporary Poetry from Great Britain (Platypus Press) and Un Nuevo Sol: New Latinx Writers (Flipped Eye). His poems have appeared in POETRY, PN Review, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Manchester Review, The White Review, Letras Libres and elsewhere. Boix is the recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize 2019. His debut English collection will be out in 2021 with Chatto & Windus.

Carlos Mauricio Rojas is a spoken word poet creating work centered around intersectional queer and Latinx identity, and reclaiming cultural heritage and language. Co-founder and resident DJ of MARICUMBIA, the queer latinx collective hosting parties and creating safe, body-positive spaces that celebrate QTIBPOC (queer, trans, intersex, black, people of colour) and latinx culture. They have performed at The Roundhouse reading their first published works featured in the anthology ‘Invisible Presence: A new Voice’.