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ep. 086 · 34 min
how to make a poetry festival from the depths
Nols Nathankski takes an hour away from festival organising to talk you through what to expect from the Hold Space Poetry Festival 1 - 5th October 2026 in the Crypt Gallery.
events
// events — coming up
03
oct
bloomsbury festival: hold space gathering
Neil Bartlett OBE premieres new work upstairs in St Pancras New Church. He will not stand there alone. St Pancras is a church carried on caryatids, stone figures holding the roof up with their own bodies, so we are giving him sixteen queer poets and four musicians of his own. The work of one of our elders, borne on the shoulders of the ones who came after because of him. Separate ticket, pay what you can up to £11.
the crypt gallery · euston road · pay what you can (£11 suggested)
// workshops
01
oct
penance poetry workshop - hold space poetry festival (3 - 5pm)
PENANCE is a poetry workshop facilitated by @nolsnathankski that brings together 7 poets to produce automatic poetry under deliberately restricted conditions in The Crypt Gallery as part of the Hold Space poetry festival.
Over the course of two hours, participants respond to three minute prompts and immediately perform their poems to the Crypt.
Poets are limited to pen, paper, and water. Choosing to use a phone, drink alcohol, smoke, or otherwise distract oneself results in becoming an audience member. None have failed yet. No photography or filming is allowed.
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £11
01
oct
the sacred space within - hold space poetry festival (3 - 5pm)
A meditative, poetic, psychedelic journey through sound, body and collective writing. Enter a space where poetry becomes ritual, sound becomes language, and the body becomes a place to listen. Facilitated by actor and poet Kristal Sisodia, The Sacred Space Within is an immersive journey through poetry, singing, live instruments, loop station, meditation and collective writing. Kristal weaves voice, rhythm and sound together to guide participants into a deeper relationship with their words, bodies and stories. Through shared prompts, musical improvisation and embodied practice, we’ll journey into the origins of poetry and ask: Where does poetry come from? Where does it live in our bodies? Why did humans create it? Who gets to have access to it? And how do we embody the written word? We’ll explore the stories we carry and the stories we choose to tell. Why do I want to tell this story? Why do I get to tell this story? Along the way, you’ll be offered grounding and relaxation tools to soften the body, release performance tension and connect more deeply with your voice.
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £11
03
oct
trash fire poetry - writing from the ashes - hold space poetry festival (1 - 3pm)
Trash Fire Poetry - Writing from the ashes with Hold Space Poetry Festival Resident Maddy Kilsby- McMurray Join a new type of writing circle, and unblock your creative practice. After an initial prompt, the poets will be asked to create a new piece of work. Each poet will be invited to share, before destroying their new work. The scraps of the poems will be combined and used to create the next pieces.
Challenge the limits of inspiration, and learn to tease new works from the ashes of what came before.
Suitable For: Poets of all levels, and for those looking for new writing inspiration.
Group Size: Up to 15 writers
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £11
03
oct
disasterpieces workshop - hold space poetry festival (3 - 5pm)
THE WORLD IS ENDING SO JOIN POET EMMA KEUN TO MAKE A DISASTER PIECE.
Workshop: Disasterpieces* [Disasterpiece is coined from disaster + masterpiece, denoting a work of art so ignominious it gains a cult following] I use the term in relation to the zeitgeist of disaster and collapse (of Western Civilisation and Western Civilisation's contradictions) that connotes the Apocalyptic and permeates throughout the 21st century .
Join Hold Space resident Emma Keun in the Crypt to make some apocalyptic poetry.
15 spaces, dress for a cold tomb and bring a pen and notebook.
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £11
04
protest poetry workshop: defamiliarising violence - hold space poetry festival (1 - 3pm)
oct
Join poet, researcher and activist Maria Cohut on a quest to turn anger into poetry, and poetry into a powerful act of protest.
What makes a poem a "protest poem"? When violence becomes everyday, banal even, how can we push back against that process of banalisation through the written or spoken word?
Join Maria in discussing and writing poetry as artivism, with examples from the slam/spoken word scene, as well as from classic and contemporary "page poetry", with guided writing exercises inspired by Viktor Shklovsky's concept of "defamiliarisation".
Optional sharing in group setting. Open to everyone, no poetry writing or spoken word performance experience required.
Workshop duration: 2 hours, including one break.
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £11
04
oct
saying the unsayable poetry workshop - hold space poetry festival (3 - 5pm)
Some losses resist language. Grief crouches in the body before it reaches the tongue.
This intimate half-day workshop for 12 poets explores grief and loss through generative writing, close reading, and honest conversation, held in the atmospheric surroundings of the Crypt Gallery, where the space itself becomes part of the work.
You'll work with:
- Anchor poems by writers who have found form for the formless
- Craft techniques for writing at the edge of language: fragment, silence, rupture, the body's knowing
- Two extended writing blocks with guided prompts
- A closing circle for optional sharing
You'll leave with new draft poems, fresh craft tools, and a sense of having written toward something real.
Suitable for: poets of all levels who want to write more honestly about grief, loss, or mourning.
Group size: 12 , kept deliberately small for depth and trust.
Facilitator: Nols Nathankski
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £7
05
penance poetry workshop - hold space poetry festival (3 - 5pm)
oct
PENANCE is a poetry workshop facilitated by @nolsnathankski that brings together 7 poets to produce automatic poetry under deliberately restricted conditions in The Crypt Gallery as part of the Hold Space poetry festival.
Over the course of two hours, participants respond to three minute prompts and immediately perform their poems to the Crypt. Poets are limited to pen, paper, and water. Choosing to use a phone, drink alcohol, smoke, or otherwise distract oneself results in becoming an audience member.
None have failed yet. No photography or filming is allowed.
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £11
05
stevie's scary stories sharing circle - hold space poetry festival (5 - 7pm)
oct
Join queer hackney poet Stevie Grant @steviepoems for an evening of scary story sharing in the atmospheric surroundings of the Crypt Gallery where the stone walls, flickering shadows, and underground air do half the work for you.
This is a circle, not a class.
Bring a scary story: one you wrote, one you love, one that has lived rent-free in your head since childhood. We'll read aloud, we'll shiver together, and we'll talk about what makes a story genuinely frightening and why poets & writers have always been drawn to the dark.
What to expect:
- An intimate sharing circle led by Stevie Grant
- Stories read aloud in candlelight (metaphorical and possibly literal)
- Conversation about craft, fear, and the long queer tradition of gothic writing
- A space that is weird, warm, and a little bit terrifying
No experience necessary. Just bring something that scares you. Suitable for: writers, readers, and anyone who has ever felt at home in the dark.
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can to £11
05
rediscovering joy in a crypt workshop - hold space poetry festival (1 - 3pm)
oct
This workshop is as light and frothy as you can get running a workshop in a crypt.
Expect to write and discuss poetry which takes your ideas to somewhere that might be bizarre, might be funny, might be surreal and almost certainly Weird.
Alice Border (@alicesayingstuff) is a slam-winning performance poet in London and part of the Make Poetry Weird Again collective. She has headlined everywhere from Somerset House to the Divine Fringe, and her work has been published by WriteLondon, Crunch and Edition. Key pieces include “The Unsolicited Shit Pic” and “An Ode To Billingsgate Fish Market”.
Her debut pamphlet, “Taste Me”, will be published in October. On a personal note, Alice suffers with severe mental health difficulties and re-found her love of poetry whilst sectioned under the Mental Health Act, when she “wrote myself out” of hospital and back into joy.
The Crypt Gallery · 165 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BA · pay what you can
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// about
nols nathankski / founder
make poetry weird again started as a podcast in hackney wick and grew into something harder to name — a live events organisation, a workshop series, a community. we make space for poetry that the mainstream doesn't know what to do with.
nols nathankski is the founder — poet, performer, former legal aid lawyer. he built this because the poetry he loved wasn't finding rooms.
nols nathankski · founder · he/him
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