Poetry in the Library

Join poets Olivia Douglass and Lucy Mercer at Forest Hill Library for a relaxed evening of poetry readings and a Q&A. There will be poetry books to borrow and buy. Please register for your free place below. If you don't currently have a Lewisham Libraries card you can book as a guest. Please note that readings will start promptly at 6.10pm. About the Poets: Olivia Douglass is a British-Nigerian writer, poet and artist. Winner of The Guardian and 4th Estate 4th Write Prize 2022. Author of two poetry pamphlets, Unruly Blood with Little Betty Press (2024) and Slow Tongue (2018). Olivia debuted their poetic performance project Ordinary Dreams at the Tate Modern in the Turbine Hall in 2024, and they were shortlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize 2020. A Barbican Young Poets alumni, their writing has appeared in publications including the Guardian, Montez Press, National Poetry Library, bathmagg, and Nothing Personal. Olivia has an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford, and is currently working across multiple genres. Lucy Mercer is a poet and writer. Her first poetry collection, Emblem (Prototype, 2022) was a Poetry Society Book Choice. Her poems and essays have been published in Art Review, Granta, Poetry Review, Poetry London, INQUE and The White Review among others. She was awarded the 2024 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Essay Prize for Afterlife, a nonfiction essay about wax and mortality that is forthcoming from Fitzcarraldo Editions. She lives in London.