Antony Dunn: Launching Inbetween Days at Friargate Theatre
LEEDS poet and dramatist Antony Dunn will launch his new collection, Inbetween Days, at the New Northern Poets (Word Up North) evening at Friargate Theatre, Lower Friargate, York, tomorrow.
Joining him will be special guests Rachel Curzon and Nicky Kippax at this Pay What You Can event, from which all proceeds will support the charitable work of Riding Lights Theatre Company, where Dunn worked earlier in his career (as well as at York Theatre Royal).
Inbetween Days can be pre-ordered from Valley Press at valleypressuk.com/products/inbetween-days. The poems inhabit the charged territory between childhood and parenthood: a place of intense pleasure, pressure, responsibility and joy.
In poems that call and respond to his previous collection, Take This One To Bed, Dunn traces lines of inheritance and succession, from not-quite-grandfather to “hard-born, hard-won” son, from poet to poet, from younger selves to older ones.
“These are poems of lives entangled with other lives, of sorrow accumulated and love stubbornly renewed, finding refuge in the most surprising places,” says Antony, 53. “Poised between celebration and lament, between the dead and the living, Inbetween Days is an urgent, intimate and vividly alive collection, written – after a decade’s distraction – during a year-long residency in my own back-garden shed.”
Fellow poet Fiona Benson says of Inbetween Days: “A collection I didn’t know I’d been thirsting for – absolutely gorgeous and a joy to read, keenly tuned to all our loves, guilts and griefs, punctuated by an aviary of strange winged prayers and written with a craft so deep and fluent that the whole collection is as musical and supple as wren-song.”
Poet, writer and broadcaster Paul Farley enthuses: “This is a wonderful collection, measured and lucid, economical and unclouded, full of poems that can make light work of heavy weather, often walking the microtonal terrain between childhood and parenthood – the borderlands of letting go – to cast a wry, level eye over proceedings, quietly revelatory and truthful.”
Antony Dunn: “Poems of lives entangled with other lives, of sorrow accumulated and love stubbornly renewed.” Picture: Sara Teresa
Inbetween Days is Leeds poet Dunn’s fifth poetry collection, after Pilots And Navigators (Oxford University Press), Flying Fish (Carcanet OxfordPoets), Bugs (Carcanet OxfordPoets) and Take This One To Bed (Valley Press).
He has written for the theatre too, including Goose Chase and Shepherds’ Delight for Riding Lights, Dog Blue, Timewarp 2000 at York Barbican and a screen adaption of Albert Camus’ stage play Cross Purpose for First Man Productions. In 2006 he contributed lyrics to Mark Ravenhill’s pantomime, Dick Whittington And His Cat, at the Barbican, London.
Dunn edited and introduced Ex Libris, the posthumous collection of poems by David Hughes (Valley Press); won the Newdigate Prize for Judith With The Head Of Holfernes in 1995 and a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2010; is a regular tutor for The Poetry School; has taught many times for the Arvon Foundation and has worked on translation projects with poets from Holland, Hungary, Israel, Palestine and China.
Dunn, who was born in London in 1973, was poet in residence at the University of York in 2006 and Ilkley Literature Festival in 2010 and was the first to hold that post for the People Powered Press, where his six-year residency ended in 2024-2025. Until 2018 he was artistic director of the Bridlington Poetry Festival.
Yorkshire writer Rachel Curzon received an Eric Gregory Award and was a New Northern Poet for 2025. Her her debut pamphlet was published in 2016 under the Faber New Poets scheme and her work has since appeared in Poetry London, The London Magazine, Poetry Review and elsewhere.
York poet Nicky Kippax, who also runs the Bluebird Bakery chain in York, Malton and Leeds, is a Northern Writers’ Award winner and her work is published widely, including in The London Magazine, Poetry Oxford, PN Review, The Rialto and Poetry News. She has received two Forward Prize nominations for best single poem (written).
Kippax has been shortlisted for The Brotherton Prize, The Bridport Prize, The Ginkgo Prize and The Bath Fiction Prize and co-hosts Rise Up!, a celebration of poetry and the spoken word, at Rise@Bluebird Bakery in Acomb, York. She is editing her first collection.
If you miss York, here is a second launch event for Antony Dunn’s Inbetween Days
Another day, another launch for Inbetween Days for Antony Dunn
ANTONY Dunn will hold a further poetry book launch for Inbetween Days, in partnership with New Northern Poets (Word Up North) and The Poetry School, at Headingley Enterprise & Arts Centre, Leeds, on Friday.
On the 7pm to 9pm bill too will be special guests Laura Strickland and Spencer Wood. Tickets are on sale at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/antony-dunn-inbetween-days-poetry-launch-tickets-1991982529368; all proceeds will support the Poetry School bursary scheme.
Laura Strickland was a New Northern Poet in 2025. Her publications include The North, Strix, The Frogmore Papers, Ink, Sweat And Tears, Northern Gravy, Propel, Atrium and Butcher’s Dog. She is a member of Dream Catcher’s editorial board and was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2023 and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2025.
Spencer Wood is a writer and facilitator from Leeds. His poetry has been published in journals and anthologies such as And Other Poems, Fourteen Poems, Broken Sleep’s Masculinity Anthology, a Verve Poetry Prize Anthology, Strix and Modern Queer Poets, among others.
Spencer’s creative non-fiction has been published in Hinterland and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His debut pamphlet, fain, was published by Seedlings in July 2026. Spencer works for an arts charity, leading shared reading groups in criminal justice settings across the north.
Did you know?
ANTONY Dunn has re-joined Riding Lights Theatre Company, based at Friargate Theatre, as head of communications.