AIDS Memorial Quilt Poetry Readings with Simon Maddrell

40 individual panels of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display through the festival and will be free to visit throughout the Festival.

The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt commemorates more than 550 people lost to HIV and AIDS across the UK. Part of the world’s largest community art project, launched in the USA in 1985 by activist Cleve Jones, the UK Quilt was established in the late 1980s through the efforts of Scottish activist Alastair Hume. Comprising 333 handmade panels, each created by someone who loved the person it honours, the Quilt is both a powerful memorial and an enduring act of activism, ensuring those lost to HIV and AIDS are remembered and never forgotten. 

We have invited six poets to read their work, and recite the names of the 60 names of the people who are represented on the Quilt display.

Simon Maddrell is a Manx writer, editor & educator who appears in Gutter, Magma, Poetry Wales, SAND, Southword, Stand, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The London Magazine, The Moth, The Rialto, Under the Radar, and others. He has been reviewed in The Guardian and Poetry Review.

His seven pamphlets include: Queerfella, The Rialto, 2020; The Whole Island, (Valley Press, 2023). Isle of Sin, a finger in derek jarman’s mouth, Patient L1 (Polari Press, 2023/24/25).

Simon’s debut collection, lamping wild rabbits (Out-Spoken Press), was Highly Commended in the 2026 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection.

Simon is a queer writer who lives with HIV and autism in Brighton and Hove.

www.simonmaddrell.com