Sammy Weaver

Sammy Weaver is an award-winning writer, performer and educator living on a narrowboat on the canals of the North.

Her debut pamphlet Angola, America (Seren, 2022) won Mslexia’s Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2021 and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2023. Angola, America explores the life of young man on death row in the USA, focussing on the racialised politics, structured cruelties, and precious moments of humanity. Angola, America received critical acclaim from the Times Literary Supplement and The Poetry Book Society. 

Her poems have appeared in Mslexia, Colorado Review, The Moth, Anthropocene and The Island Review. Her nature journal won The Moth’s Nature Writing Prize and was published in The Irish Times. She has performed at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Arvon Festival of Writing, Swindon Poetry Festival, and Bristol Poetry Festival. In 2025, she was made a Yaddo Fellow and won a Northern Writers’ Award for Poetry. 

In 2025-26, she was the first Poet Laureate of Rochdale. She led twenty workshops for young people in local libraries, including students with SEND and care experience. She mentored two young poets-in-residence. The year culminated in a showcase that launched two printed anthologies of poems created in her workshops. 

Sammy has ten years’ experience leading workshops in community, education and criminal justice settings. She has designed and delivered workshops for Arvon, Leeds Arts University, HMP Buckley Hall, Westminster Abbey, and Hoot Creative Arts. She also delivers CPD for teachers.