Patience Agbabi is a Nigerian British poet and performer who emphasises the spoken word as much as the written. Her poetry addresses contemporary issues by means of a language that mixes classic forms such as the sonnet with the modern rhythms of rap and grime. She moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures and dialects. Her poetry collections include: R.A.W., Transformatrix, Bloodshot Monochrome, and Telling Tales. She is the author of The Leap Cycle, a time-travel tetralogy for children. Her verse novel, Wonderland, is due in 2026. 

Fiona Benson's collections are Bright Travellers (Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Seamus Heaney Prize for First Collection), Vertigo & Ghost (winner of the Roehampton and Forward Poetry Prizes), Ephemeron and Midden Witch, all published by Cape. Her first three collections were all shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. She is one of the RSL's newest fellows and lives in mid Devon with her husband James Meredith and their two daughters.

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Anne Berkeley practised for some years as a solicitor but has been writing for longer. With the poetry ensemble The Joy of Six she toured widely. Her pamphlet The buoyancy aid and other poems was published by Flarestack in 1997, and her first full collection, The Men from the Praga (Salt, 2010), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. She edited Rebecca Elson’s acclaimed posthumous collection A Responsibility to Awe (Carcanet, 2001), which is now a Carcanet Classic.
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Laurie Bolger is a London-based writer and founder of The Creative Writing Breakfast Club. Her debut pamphlet Box Rooms (Burning Eye) has featured at Glastonbury, TATE, RA & Sky Arts. Laurie’s writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, The London Magazine, Magma, Crannog, Stand and her poems have been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, Live Canon, Winchester and Sylvia Plath Prizes. In 2023, Laurie’s poem ‘Parkland Walk’ was awarded The Moth Prize and was Highly Commended in the Forward Prize for Poetry. Her latest publications include Makeover (The Emma Press) Spin (The Poetry Business) and debut collection Lady (Nine Arches).​

Born and raised in Cameroon, Clementine Ewokolo Burnley is a multilingual author, writer of poems, short stories, and non-fiction works. In 2021 her poem ‘How to Eat Frogs’ was selected by Hugh Macmillan as one of the Best Scottish Poems.  In 2021, she was the RSL Sky Award Winner for creative nonfiction. Her pamphlet, Radical Pairings is published by ignitionpress. She's joint winner of the 2024 James Berry Poetry Competition. Clementine's first full collection is due out with Bloodaxe in 2026.​

J. R. Carpenter is an artist, writer, researcher, and lecturer. Her work concerns place, displacement, migration, colonialism and climate. Her digital poem The Gathering Cloud won the New Media Writing Prize 2026. Her debut poetry collection An Ocean of Static was highly commended for the Forward Prize 2019. Her hybrid print-digital project This is a Picture of Wind was listed in The Guardian's best poetry books of 2020 and featured in the British Library's Digital Storytelling exhibition 2023. Her most recent collection, Measures of Weather, was The Observer's poetry book of the month, Feb 2025.

Gabrielle Cracknell is a poet and fiction writer from Ipswich, Suffolk. Her work has been published by Nottingham Poetry Exchange, Streetcake Magazine, Beir Bua Press and more. In 2021, her poem 'I don’t think this is working' was shortlisted for Streetcake’s Experimental Writing Prize. ​Most recently, Gabrielle was a poet-in-residence with Suffolk Libraries and the National Centre for Writing, culminating in a performance at Lowestoft’s 2025 First Light Festival. Her poetry experiments with form, spanning verse, prose poetry and collage.​

Eve Ellis is a London-based poet and educator from the United States.  An alumna of the London Library Emerging Writers Programme, her poems have appeared in publications such as Magma, Perverse, Poetry Wales, and And Other Poems. Her debut pamphlet, Spit Valve, was published by ignitionpress in 2025.  

Jasmine Gardosi is the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and an Honorary Doctor of Letters. They are a multiple slam champion, beatboxer, winner of the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry and winner of the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Performer 2023. Their work exploring identity, LGBTQ issues and mental health has appeared on Button Poetry, at Tate Modern, Symphony Hall and BBC. Jasmine has been invited to perform across the world, including The Philippines, Estonia and Romania. Their award-poetry/beatbox/Celtic dubstep show ‘Dancing To Music You Hate’ explores gender identity.

Daisy Henwood is a writer and arts producer based in Norwich. Her work has appeared in Poetry Wales, Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Birmingham and Under the Radar. She received her PhD in environmental literature from UEA in 2020. She teaches writing workshops for all ages and has worked with National Centre for Writing, Young Norfolk Arts, Norfolk Wildlife Trust and the Norfolk Museums Service. She was writer-in-residence at Norwich Castle and virtual writer-in-residence for the Werribee River Association in Melbourne in 2022. 

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Sarah Bethan Hudis is a queer writer from West Wales, now based in Norfolk. They are grateful to have essays and poetry published by Poetry Wales, Horizon Magazine, Disappointment Magazine, and in anthologies by Kunsthalle Cromer and Crested Tit Collective. Their poem 'Anderson’s Meadow, April 2020' was shortlisted for the 2022 Ginko Prize Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty Best Poem of UK Landscape. They are part of the Bound/Unbound poetry collective, formed during a residency with Ipswich County Library and the National Centre for Writing. 

Karl Knights’ essays, reviews and poems have appeared in The Guardian, The Poetry Review, The Rialto, Poetry London and elsewhere. Karl won a 2021 New Poets Prize. His debut pamphlet, Kin, appeared in 2022 with The Poetry Business. His poems have been anthologised in 100 Queer Poems (Vintage), Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets (Bloodaxe Books) and The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. An essay on a Blythburgh doorstep, ‘My Actual Huh’, was published by The Poetry Foundation in June. He lives in Suffolk.

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Vanessa Lampert's collection Say It With Me was published by Seren in 2023. Her pamphlet 'On Long Loan' was published by Live Canon in 2020. Her work has recently appeared in Poetry London, Rialto, Oxford Poetry, The London Magazine and Forward Prizes anthology. She has won first prize in competitions including the Edward Thomas, Cafe Writers, Segora and the Ver prize twice. 
She was commended in the National Poetry Competition 2019. She was a founder editor of The Alchemy Spoon magazine.

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bitemarks is an award-winning writer, performance maker and visual artist from Lancashire, currently based in Norfolk. Her writing has been commissioned and performed across the UK: in theatres, museums, schools, galleries, outdoors and online. Recently, she has been a resident poet on the Bound/Unbound project at Suffolk Libraries, a resident artist with the European Theatre Convention, and was commissioned to perform a site specific piece at Hay Festival. She makes work that is joyful, strange, messy, tender and full of love. 

Oluwaseun (Seun) Olayiwola is a poet, critic, choreographer and performer based in London. His creative and critical work has been published in The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Telegraph, the TLS and elsewhere. His choreographic work has been presented at the V&A, The Place, The Central School of Ballet, and Studio Voltaire. He’s been commissioned by RSL, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Southwark Council, and Studio 3 Arts. Seun has an MFA in Choreography from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he was a Fulbright Scholar in 2018-2019. He recently began lecturing in dance in the Kingston School of Art. 

Eileen Pun is the daughter of Haitian-Chinese parents. She is a poet, translator, farmer, maker and martial artist. She has worked in solidarity with indigenous growers & artisans in Costa Rican forests, and in collaboration with indigenous forest defenders from Borneo, Malaysia. Her approach to poetry is an experiential ecosystem: living, integrative, interdisciplinary & international. Themes include: movement, the meditative space, permaculture, self-sufficiency and Daoism towards living creatively & harmoniously with/in nature whilst pioneering the possibilities of ‘how we live next’.​​​​

Bohdan Piasecki is a poet from Poland based in the UK, interested in voice, multilingualism, and storytelling. In 2003 he started Poland's first poetry slam. Since then he has taken his poems from upstairs rooms in local pubs to theatre stages, from underground Tokyo clubs to tramways in Paris, from a bookshop in Beijing to an airfield in Berlin, from niche podcasts to BBC radio, and more. In 2023, Bohdan was awarded the inaugural Forward Prize for best single poem (performed). Bohdan lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.​

Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the poetry collection Another Way to Split Water (Polygon Books and YesYes Books). Her nonfiction debut A Beautiful and Vital Place won the 2023 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and is forthcoming with Canongate. Alycia currently teaches on the Creative Writing Master’s at the University of Cambridge.

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Roger Robinson, an award-winning writer and performer, has won the T.S. Eliot Prize, RSL Ondaatje Prize, and Cholmondeley Award, and is Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. His poetry has been translated into five languages, and his book with Johny Pitts was named a Guardian Best Poetry Book of the Year. He has judged major literary prizes, and his poem 'A Portable Paradise' is on the GCSE syllabus. 
 

Mike Sims is the author of the limited edition leporello, 8 Divagations, shown in the By the Way exhibition, London, and the co-author, with Julia Bird, of A Joy Forever – A Walk Out with John Keats (Paekakariki Press) and Paper Trail (Blown Rose). He and Julia Bird have run Keats-inspired events at Keats House, London, Keats-Shelley House, Rome, and several literary festivals. He has collaborated on artist’s books with Roy Willingham; as a member of Ground Collective, he has exhibited in London, Margate and St Leonards. He is the Director of the
T. S. Eliot Prize and lives in London.

Poppy Stevens is a poet, performer and educator living in Norfolk. Her writing has been commissioned by, The National Centre for Writing, TOAST Poetry, BBC Radio Norfolk, The English Touring Opera and has appeared in Atrium. Poppy runs dyslexia- inclusive creative writing sessions for young people. She is currently researching and developing her debut pamphlet.

Phoebe Sung is Chinese-British poet who delves into themes of identity and heritage, writing under her Chinese name Ming Ming. She is currently working on a collection about her recent voyage and search of finding her birth family, returning to China, where she was born for the first time since she was adopted. She had the pleasure of taking part in the Suffolk Community Libraries writing residency, Bound/Unbound which was funded by the National Centre for Writing. She also had the chance to lead two workshops at the First Light Festival.

Sue Wallace-Shaddad has published three poetry pamphlets: Once There Was Colour (Palewell Press), Sleeping Under Clouds (Clayhanger Press) and A City Waking Up (Dempsey and Windle).  Widely published online and in print, Sue writes poetry reviews, runs workshops and is a trustee of Suffolk Poetry Society. She was recipient of an Arts Council DYCP grant in 2023/24.  
 

Stephen Watts's most recent books include Journeys Across Breath: Poems 1975-2005 (Prototype Publishing 2022) and Republic Of Dogs/ Republic Of Birds (Prototype Publishing 2018). A 70-minute b/w 16mm film of the latter, 'The Republics', was made by Huw Wahl in 2019. He edited Swirl Of Words/Swirl Of Worlds: Poems In 94 Languages Spoken Across Hackney for PEER Gallery in 2021. Explosion Of Words: Poems 2006-2025 and A Book Of Drawn Poems are both forthcoming.

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Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is widely regarded as one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic. Famous since a teenager, he is admired for the lyric intensity of his poetry and for his principled opposition to Sudan’s dictatorship. His Collected Poems was published in 2010. A distinguished journalist, he was forced into exile in 2012 and now lives in London.

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Caroline Bergvall is an award-winning writer and interdisciplinary artist who works across languages, media and artforms. She was awarded the Cholmondeley Award and Bernard Heidseick Art Prize for her art-poetic production. Her books include Meddle English (2011), Drift (2015) and Alisoun Sings (2019). Currrent performances include the nocturnal work Nattsong and the conversational Conference of the Birds. She was a Henry Moore Artist Fellow 2024, and Global Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary London (2022-2025).
Image credt: Josh Redman​

Julia Bird is a poet and arts administrator. She has published the poetry collections Hannah and the Monk (2008) and Twenty-four Seven Blossom (2013) with Salt Publishing, and the pamphlets Now You Can Look (2017) and is, thinks Pearl (2021) with The Emma Press. Blown Rose is a creative collective she has founded with fellow poet Mike Sims. The pair pursue whatever books, events and projects catch their eye. Currently, they're involved with a performance series based on the life and work of John Keats.​

“The Eric Clapton of the Lute”, Sam Brown is a UK-based chordophonist, known for his sensitive style and engaging performances. For the last nine years he has performed internationally at major venues, including Konzerthaus Wien and Wigmore Hall, and alongside figures such as Emma Kirkby, Mark Rylance, and Harriet Walter. Dedicatee of a concerto by Barry Mills, Sam is founder of lute-song ensemble Dowlands Foundry and has directed youth music scheme Dowland Youth Works since its inception in 2019. 

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Born in 1993, Lewis Buxton is a poet and performer. His work has appeared in Poetry Review, The Rialto and The Independent and won the Winchester Poetry Prize. His publications include Boy in Various Poses (Nine Arches Press, 2021) and Mate Arias (The Emma Press, 2025). He lives in Norfolk and is a TOAST poet.

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Shannon Clinton-Copeland is an Irish-Jamaican poet living in Norwich, where she is working on her PhD in early modern Irish literature at UEA. Her work has been published by The Rialto, Acumen, The Galway Review, and been commissioned by the National Centre for Writing. She was the runner-up in the Micropoetry Competition 2025. She is a Deputy Editor for Anthropocene.

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Rishi Dastidar's third collection, Neptune’s Projects (Nine Arches Press), was longlisted for the Laurel Prize, and a poem from it was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2024. He is also editor of The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century (Nine Arches Press), and co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (Corsair). He is a consulting editor at The Rialto, reviews poetry for The Guardian and is chair of Wasafiri, the leading magazine of international contemporary writing.

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Annie Freud is a poet, painter, essayist, translator, editor and teacher. She is the author of four collections of poetry published by Picador: The Best Man That Ever Was, winner of the Dimplex Prize for New Writing, The Mirabelles, shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, The Remains and Hiddensee.

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Alastair Gavin is a keyboards player, composer and orchestrator. Recently he has had two ambient electronic albums released by Warner Chappells, a composing residency in Benjamin Britten’s Red House, Aldeburgh, and undertaken a Masters in Scenography from Central School of Speech and Drama. He works regularly as a keyboardist in the West End and in the ’80s was the keyboards presenter for the second season of BBC2’s Rockschool. 

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Artist and poet Sophie Herxheimer has held many residencies in the UK and internationally, with work has shown at Tate Modern, Museum of Liverpool and on a giant mural along the sea-front at Margate. Her poetry collection Velkom to Inklandt (Short Books, 2017) was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her book 60 Lovers to Make and Do, (Henningham Family Press, 2019) was a TLS Book of the Year. Her latest collection is INDEX (zimzalla, 2021) 78 collage poems published as a tarot deck. Her first graphic novel comes out in 2026 with Pushkin Press.
 

Ellen Jeffrey is a neurodivergent dance artist and researcher working with time-specific choreographic practices. She studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and University of the Arts Helsinki before completing her PhD at Lancaster University. Working collaboratively with local artists and communities to generate performances, films, workshops and writings, Ellen’s work explores the capacity of dance and movement to attune to more-than-human timescales. Her work has been funded by the AHRC and Heritage Lottery Fund, amongst others, and supported by Cumbria, Lancashire, and Yorkshire Wildlife Trusts, and Morecambe Bay Partnership. She lives and works in Northumberland.

Hanna Komar is a Belarusian poet, writer, translator and performer. She’s published five poetry collections, including the most recent Ribwort, and a non-fiction book about the experience of incarceration for peaceful protest in Belarus. Her debut play Body in Progress was staged at the Voila! festival in London. Hanna's a member of PEN Belarus and an honorary member of English PEN. Freedom of Speech 2020 Prize laureate from the Norwegian Authors’ Union. She's currently taking a PhD at the University of Brighton, exploring how poetry can support Belarusian women to share experiences of domestic abuse and state violence.

Michael Laskey co-founded and directed the original Aldeburgh Poetry Festival through its first decade. He co-edited fifty issues of Smiths Knoll. His Garlic Press publishes mainly Suffolk poets. T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted and twice PBS recommended, he has published six collections, most recently Between Ourselves (Smith/Doorstop, 2022).

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Cheryl Moskowitz is a US-born poet, novelist and creative translator. She facilitates poetry projects in a wide variety of health and community settings. She co-created All Saints Sessions together with Alastair Gavin in 2017. Wayward Thoughts (album released October ’25) is a poetry and music collaboration with lutenist Sam Brown. Cheryl was one of the inaugural Aldeburgh Eight at the original Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 2013. She is an editor at Magma.

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Ian Patterson is a critic, poet and translator, formerly Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Cambridge University. His elegy for his late wife, the writer Jenny Diski, won the Forward prize for best single poem in 2017. His Collected Poems were published by Broken Sleep in 2024.

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Sue Mobbs' poetry is often influenced by landscape and nature. In 2018 she won a prize in the Rialto Nature and Place Competition and has had poems published by Suffolk Poetry Society. 

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Hannah Silva is a writer and performer confronting big ideas through formal innovation and a seriously playful approach to language and technology. Their work spans BBC radio dramas—winning the Tinniswood Award for best script—and two decades of critically acclaimed poetry and performance. Their record Talk in a bit was among The Wire's top 25 albums of 2016. Their latest book, My Child, the Algorithm (Footnote Press UK/Softskull Press North America), weaves memoir and fiction through conversations with a toddler and an early open source language model, exploring queer single parenting and love. It was named one of Granta's Books of the Year 2023. Silva's second poetry collection, Crow, Pirate, Fly, is forthcoming with Bad Betty Press.

Clare Pollard’s first collection of poetry The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe, 1998) was written while she was still at school, and received an Eric Gregory award. Her fourth collection Changeling (Bloodaxe, 2011) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation.
Clare teaches regularly for the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry School and the City Literary Institute. Her new collection  Lives of the Female Poets contains poems about and inspired by historical female poets from Enheduanna through to Sylvia Plath.​

Richard Scott is the author of Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018) and That Broke into Shining Crystals (Faber & Faber, 2025). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His second collection That Broke into Shining Crystals explores trauma and vulnerability – violation and its aftershock – are explored within a framework of self-determination and radical queerness. In three sequences, he documents what it is to have survived 'seismic assaults, the buried silences'. 

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Jenifer Smith has a particular interest in children and their teachers writing together and the ways in which we learn to write. She retired from her post as senior lecturer in the School of Education, UEA, in 2016 but continues to work in schools. She has published two pamphlets with Garlic Press: Reading Through the Night and Snicketty Snack, poems with children in mind.

Jon Stone is a Derbyshire-born writer, editor and researcher. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2012, the Poetry London Prize in 2014 and 2016 and the Live Canon International Poetry Competition in 2018. His most recent short books are Unravelanche (Broken Sleep, 2021), Sandsnarl (The Emma Press, 2021) and a pamphlet essay, Poems Are Toys (And Toys Are Good For You) (Calque, 2023). He has also published a monograph, Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games (DeGruyter, 2022). He teaches writing at Anglia Ruskin University.

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Cameron Tricker is a writer from Thetford, Norfolk. His prose writing was shortlisted for Bloomsbury's Writers & Artists Working-Class Writers' Prize, 2024. His poetry can be found in The Poet's Republic, The Gentian, Ink Sweat & Tears and more. His debut pamphlet, New Modalities, explores the intersection between class, mental-health and impermanence.

Jevan Watkins Jones is an artist whose work moves between drawing, sculpture and writing. His work is characterised by a sensitive attention to different states of being with a relational interest in human actions and biophysical environments. Jevan lives in Suffolk and is currently artist-in-residence at The Old Bank Riverside Community Garden for The Art Station, Saxmundham.

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