On Saturday 27th September (6.30-8.pm) Northern Stage are hosting the Poets of Colour Showcase for ages 14+. Tickets are £12 and refugees and people seeking asylum can attend for £5 using the code; POET5.
More information and booking links can be found on Northern Stage’s website: Poets of Colour Incubator Showcase | Northern Stage.
This immersive, multimedia showcase features original work by lauded Poets of Colour Incubator alumni Ilisha Thiru Purcell, Jeremy Pak Nelson and Princess Arinola Adegbite on the power of sleeping and dreaming, what home means to us and technology’s ability to connect and divide.
Sleep (e)Quality, performed by Ilisha Thiru Purcell, is a poetic exploration of the power of dreams and sleep as a growing health inequality in response to the question: ‘Who is able to rest?’. Jeremy Pak Nelson’s The Homes We Carry asks: ‘How do we make a place, where we have no history, feel like home? as part of his experimental soundscape inspired by ancestral homelands, rituals and past selves. The showcase ends with Princess Arinola Adegbite’s Algorithm of Meaning. This surrealist deep dive into AI, romantic relationships, family, health and colonial perspectives ruminates on ‘Whose future is being served?’
From large-scale projections of poems-as-paintings, film and musical interpretations to performance poetry designed to simulate sleep stages, discover the power of poetry to inspire answers to global issues.
The Poetry for Change Showcase was first performed at Contact Theatre Manchester to rave reviews. A partnership between Manchester Poetry Library, Words of Colour, New Writing North, this iteration is supported by Northern Stage a year after its debut.
About the poets
- Ilisha Thiru Purcell is an award-winning Sri Lankan-Scottish poet from Newcastle upon Tyne. Her debut pamphlet What She Said was published in 2025 by Verve Poetry Press and was the 2025 Poetry Book Society Autumn Pamphlet Choice. Ilisha was shortlisted for the James Berry Prize 2024 and was a Poet in Residence at the 2025 StAnza Poetry Festival, winning the Futurist Award. Her work has been widely published and appears in publications such as Bi+ Lines Anthology, Butcher’s Dog, and Under the Radar.
- Jeremy Pak Nelson is a writer and artist from Hong Kong. Based in Manchester, he holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a graduate of Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His poetry explores how identity is entangled with our inherited narratives of place and home. His climate fiction has been selected as a Grist: Imagine 2200 Editor’s Pick, and he was writer-in-residence at UK Space Conference 2025.
- Princess Arinola Adegbite, professionally known as P.A.BITEZ is a multi-award-winning British Jamaican Nigerian surrealist poet, musician and filmmaker who combines social activism with Afrofuturistic sensibilities. Based in Salford, her awards include Manchester Young Creative of the Year 2021 (Culture Awards), a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award 2023 and the Northern Debut Award for Poetry at the 2025 Northern Writers’ Awards. Her poetry has been commissioned by BBC, Selfridges, Chanel, The British Museum, and the University of Cambridge. Marco Sebastiano Alessi of Sounds of Life Magazine called BITEZ an “inventive polymath”.
Accessible printed copies of all of the poems to be performed can be requested on the night.