Poetry for Holocaust Memorial Day, Tuesday 27 January, 2026

A recital of poems takes place annually in Shrewsbury Abbey on 27th January, Holocaust Memorial Day. Jean Boase-Beier and Angela Jarman read poems from Arc’s Poetry of the Holocaust: An Anthology (ed. Jean Boase-Beier and Marian de Vooght, and from several other sources.
On Holocaust Memorial Day people come together in towns and cities across the UK to remember the victims of the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945, when 6 million Jews were systematically murdered, as were thousands of disabled people, Roma people, gay men, political opponents of the Nazis, and many others. Many Holocaust victims were never able to tell their stories, and the reading, like the anthology, also includes poems from the next generation, who speak in their names.

In our annual readings we remember that genocide did not stop in 1945, and so we also recall more recent events in Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Palestine, and elsewhere.

By reading these poems, we can help to make sure that the voices of those who speak out against genocide are not silenced.
Past readings, while always taking Poetry of the Holocaust: An Anthology as their basis, have also included poems from collections by other publishers, as well as from Arc books by Matilda Olkinaite (The Cerulean Bird, translated by Laima Vincë), Paul Celan (Eye of the Times, translated by Jean Boase-Beier), Volker von Törne (Memorial to the Future, translated by Jean Boase-Beier and Anthony Vivis), Ro Mehrooz (Poems Written Through Barbed-wire Fences, translated by the poet and James Byrne), Mourid Barghouti (Midnight and Other Poems, translated by Radwa Ashour), and Dilawar Karadaghi (My Country's Hair Turned White, translated by Jiyar Homer and Mike Baynham), among others.