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Poet and Sound Artist Hannah Silva has written a new commission to celebrate the transfer of the Art’s Council’s poetry archive to the Poetry Library at Southbank Centre, creating the world’s largest public collection of modern poetry. Hannah reads from her commission, ‘This Air’, explaining how she was inspired by spending time buried in folders at the Poetry Library, and by the frequency of the word ‘Air’ in the poems she came across.

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Hannah Silva on Twitter

Luke Kennard has always written poems featuring wolves, as the device of a talking animal allows him to interrogate himself. Luke reads ‘Wolf Shibboleth’, which he calls a self-psychoanalysis poem. Luke Kennard is the current Canal Laureate and his latest book ‘Cain’ is published by Penned in the Margins.

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Poet and Playwright Sabrina Mahfouz reads from her new collection ‘How You Might Know Me’ (Out-Spoken). Sabrina wrote the poems after speaking to women working in the sex industry. She wanted to write work that did not sensationalise, but rather shone a light on their day-to-day experiences. She performs ‘The Most Honest Job I’ve Ever Had’ ’, which unpacks the very British phrase ‘to be honest’.

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Inua Ellams has written the first in a series of ten new poems commissioned for Radio 3’s 70th Birthday, as part of the ‘Three Score and Ten’ series, which celebrates the station’s poetry archive and looks to its future. In his poem ‘Saxophone Player’s Mouth’, he tackles the complicated life of his hero, the great Nigerian Musician Fela Kuti.

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Chris Riddell is a political cartoonist, an illustrator and a writer of Children's books. He won the Costa Children's Book Award for 'Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse' in 2013.

Chris was on stage for the enteritis of National Poetry Day Live at Southbank, illustrating the poems as they were performed. You can see some of his work during our recording