Thundering In Your Ear

Four poets gather at the Oxford Poetry Library on Friday, 11 September at 7pm, to celebrate new books by Jay Gao (The Dead One) and Theophilus Kwek (Odeon). Join them, alongside Mary Jean Chan and Nathaniel Chew, to hear some of their latest work, with echoes of the many cities they’ve called home – including Edinburgh, Hong Kong, New York, Singapore, Oxford and beyond.

Tickets are £5 (£2 concessions, £10 to pay a little more to support the work we do) – please book tickets in advance here!

The building is accessible, but if you have any specific access needs, please drop us an email at oxfordpoetrylibrary@gmail.com beforehand.

More about the poets –  

Jay Gao is a poet and writer from Edinburgh, Scotland, living in New York City. His second poetry collection The Dead One, The Unconscious One, Thundering in Your Ear, Thriving Slumber is forthcoming in Fall 2026 from Nightboat Books and Carcanet Press. His debut collection Imperium (2022) was a winner of the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in English at Columbia University.

Nathaniel Chew is a librarian and writer from Singapore, interluding in Oxford. His collection featherweight (2019) won the Golden Point Award for Poetry in English, and his writing is published in New Singapore Poetries (Gaudy Boy, 2022), Multiple Exposures (Longbarrow Press, 2022), and online at ArtsEquator, PR&TA, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.

Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry. Bright Fear (Faber, 2023), their second book, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Chan co-edited 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan, and is currently Departmental Lecturer in Poetry on the MSt in Creative Writing and Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.

Theophilus Kwek has published five collections of poetry, most recently Commonwealth (Carcanet Press, 2025). In 2023, he was the youngest writer and first Singaporean to be awarded the Cikada Prize by the Swedish Institute, for poetry that “defends the inviolability of life”. His essays have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Columbia Journal, Wasafiri and elsewhere. Odeon (Ethos Books, 2026) is his first book-length work of nonfiction.