Maryville

Joelle Taylor is the author of four collections of poetry. Her previous collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet was published by Riverrun in 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue Now, inspired by Derek Jarman's Blue. Blue Now was directed by Neil Bartlett and also featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Her latest collection Maryville was published by Bloomsbury in 2025. She received a Society of Authors Cholmondeley Prize in 2026.

Delivers layers of brilliance and linguistic ingenuity. Taylor’s poetry is as dangerous as it is dexterous, as sophisticated and tensely coiled as it is a wildfire blazing free, as unclichéd as it is unpredictable, as emotionally engrossing as it is imaginatively mind-blowing. From the very first lines that ignite the imagination to the last . . . this is a consistently dazzling work of art