Photopoetry: An evening of words and images

Photographs and poems have appeared side-by-side in books since the mid-nineteenth century, but the designation ‘photopoetry’ is relatively recent. Today, photopoetry is flourishing, whether in publications by poet-photographers, collaborations between writers and visual artists, or in edited volumes.   

This celebratory evening of words and images coincides with the Photopoetry display in the V&A Photography Centre.  David Solo – a passionate collector, enthusiastic photopoetry advocate, and guest-curator of the display – will give a brief history of the genre.  Four contemporary practitioners, Poulomi Basu, Siddharth Khajuria, Vik Shirley, and Andrew Zawacki, will then read poems from their own work while showing associated images. The evening will culminate with a panel discussion, moderated by V&A Curator of Photography Marta Weiss, exploring the creative possibilities of bringing poetry and photography into dialogue.  

Artist/author biographies: 

Poulomi Basu Poulomi Basu is a multimedia artist and author known for her exploration of the interrelationship between systems of power and bodies through work that exists at the limits of visual art/ photography, film, creative technologies and activism. Basu’s work is defined by her transnational identity, working across cross/interdisciplinary and experimental mediums. Basu is a BAFTA Breakthrough UK 2024 awardee, was nominated in competition at Festival de Cannes 2024 and was awarded an ICP Museum Infinity Award in 2023. Her work is held in the international collections of the V&A, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Museum of Modern Art Library – Special Collections, Harvard Art Museums and more.  

Siddharth Khajuria is an artist and producer, based in suburban London. He uses photography and writing to make images, publications and objects. His work traces the tension between assimilation and resistance in our social and natural habitats. Recent projects include a series of painted photographs, Your Careful Facades, and the book, Why are we doing it like this?, a communal portrait built from the words of friends. He’s also co-founder of Grand Plan, a charity awarding £1,000 grants to artists of colour, and was previously Senior Producer at the Barbican, and Director of Science Gallery London. 

Vik Shirley is a poet, writer and interdisciplinary artist from Bristol now living in Edinburgh. Her recent publications include Amorous Electrons (Intergraphia, 2026), Some Deer (Broken Sleep, 2024) and Strangers Wave (zimZalla, 2023). In 2025, her third book of photo poetry, Persona Digitalia, was selected for the Photoworks (in collaboration with David Solo and Jane and Jeremy) inaugural P5 photo poetry series and published the same year. Her photo poetry has also been exhibited in Malmö and New York. Vik has a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry from the University of Birmingham. She co-edits Spite Press, a new Scottish press for innovative writing. 

Andrew Zawacki is the author of six poetry books, most recently These Late Eclipses (Verge, 2025). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, and other international journals. His translation of Sébastien Smirou, My Lorenzo, received a French Voices Grant, and his translation of Smirou’s See About earned an NEA Translation Fellowship and a fellowship from the Centre National du Livre. He was coeditor of the international journal Verse from 1995 through 2019. A former Howard Foundation Fellow in Poetry, Zawacki is Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of Georgia.