Ware Poets – Karen Downs-Barton

Doors 7:45pm.

Karen Downs-Barton is an award-winning Anglo-Romani poet based in Wiltshire. Her debut collection, Minx (Chatto and Windus / Penguin, 2025), a memoire in poetry, won the prestigious John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet, Didicoy (Smith|Doorstop) won the 2022 International Poetry Book and Pamphlet competition was a 2023 Poetry Book Society recommendation. Karen has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s The Verb, headlined Ledbury Festival, Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival, Deptford Literature Festival and Edinburgh International Book Festival. Poetry from her PhD thesis exploring the development of identity through experimental and multilingual poetry won the Cosmo Davenport-Hines poetry competition. Karen has written for the i newspaper and her poetry has appeared in Ink, Sweat, and Tears; The North; Tears in the Fence, Rattle amongst others, is widely anthologised and has been translated into Spanish, Russian and Farsi.

The first half of this event will be open mic, so please feel free to bring and read a poem in a friendly and welcoming space.

Tickets should be bought in advance but there will also be availability on the door.

Southern Maltings is the trading name of Ware Arts Centre Limited and is a registered charity (Registered charity no. 276998).

All events are run by volunteers and proceeds go towards developing the Southern Maltings into an amazing creative arts centre which will enable us to put on a wider and more frequent range of events and activities for the whole community.