Join us for an afternoon reading in the Skyspace with resident poet, Matt Howard. This event marks the end of Matt’s year in residence at YSP, throughout this time he has been embedded at the park, writing poetry in response to the YSP landscape and all of the nature that calls it home.

Matt has selected a series of these poems to form his latest collection. YSP is pleased to be publishing Resident, a pamphlet of poems encapsulating Matt’s time at the park.

"The poems are encounters with the many wonders of YSP, the sculpture of course, but also the landscape of the park itself and all its many constituent species from ancient trees, wildflowers, fish and birds.”

Resident, will be available from YSP Shops from Saturday 2 August.

A copy of Resident will be included with every ticket purchased for this event.  

About Matt

Matt Howard is the recipient of the 2024/2025 YSP/Laureate Fund Residency supported by the T. S. Eliot Foundation, which has been made possible by YSP Trustee and Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage.

Matt is manager of the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. His first collection, Gall, was published by The Rialto in 2018 and was winner of the 2018 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Prize in 2019, and won Best First Collection in the inaugural Laurel Prize 2020. After eleven years working for the RSPB, Matt was Douglas Caster Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds from 2021-2023. His second collection, Broadlands, is published by Bloodaxe.