TOAST Poetry

TOAST is about really good poetry. An evening of spoken word and live performance, TOAST is Norfolk’s biggest regular poetry night.  At TOAST you will laugh, cry and find something you like (even if you don’t think you like poetry). Funny, emotional and entertaining, this is a great night out for everyone.

In February 2024, we have our biggest show to date at The Norwich Theatre Playhouse, so we are bringing two of the biggest names in UK poetry to the stage.

Joelle Taylor is the winner of the T.S Eliot Prize for Poetry and a Poetry Fellow at the University of East Anglia. She has published four collections of poetry and has a forthcoming novel, The Night Alphabet, arriving in Spring 2024. She is the foundation of so much of the performers and poets we have programmed over the years: she’s funny, anthemic and you will leave her performance feeling stronger and ready to fight for a new cause.

Alongside Joelle Taylor, we have the rapper, songwriter and raconteur Dizraeli. He will be celebrating the publication of his first book, Animal Noises: a collection of lyrics, diary entries, experimental writings and surreal illustrations drawn from the margins of his notebooks.

Animal Noises is a searingly honest exploration of the mess of human creation, and it bursts with life.  Dizraeli strips his craft to the bones, sharing writings on fatherhood, sex and the end of the world with that ferociously sharp lyricism and sense of the absurd that are his trademarks: think Dylan Thomas meeting Black Thought at a John Cage concert, and you’re halfway there.