Category: Participants

Hannah Hodgon is an award-winning poet and a palliative care patient. In her compelling debut collection 163 Days, she uses a panoply of medical, legal, and personal vocabularies to explore what illness, death and dying does to a person as both patient and witness.

Donald Jenkins is performance poet, writer and spoken word producer. His work has featured in – ‘New Word Order’ anthology- ‘The Writer’s Cafe’ magazine and ‘Riggwelter’ journal and ‘Best New British Poets 2020/21 Anthology’ from Eyewear Publishing. Jenkins won the Great Gateshead Poetry Slam 2018 and has performed at Glastonbury Festival and Royal Albert Hall.… Continue reading Don Jenkins

Rowan McCabe is a poet from Newcastle upon Tyne. He’s been commissioned by Channel 4, Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’ and the National Trust. He has performed his work around the UK, from the Edinburgh Fringe to Glastonbury Festival and was the world’s first Door-to-Door Poet.

Kay Greyson is a twenty year old Hip Hop artist from the North East of England. Since releasing her debut mixtape ‘Morning After Music’ in 2016, she has performed all across the north including supporting gigs for acts like Akala, KRS One and Pharoahe Monch. She takes strong inspiration from her influences Chance the rapper… Continue reading Kay Greyson

John Challis is a poet, researcher and teacher living in the North East. His debut collection of poems The Resurrectionists was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2021. Until recently, he was writer-in-residence at the National Trust’s Seaton Delaval Hall, where he produced Hallsong, a series of poems published as a pamphlet and made into a film. He… Continue reading John Challis

Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He lives in Vancouver, where he is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. His books are THIS WOUND IS A WORLD, winner of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize, NDN COPING MECHANISMS, longlisted for Canada Reads… Continue reading Billy-Ray Belcourt 

Polly Atkin is a poet and nonfiction writer, living in the English Lake District. Her first poetry collection Basic Nest Architecture (Seren: 2017) is followed by Much With Body (Seren, 2021), supported a 2020 Northern Writers Award. She has also published three pamphlets: bone song (Aussteiger, 2008), Shadow Dispatches (Seren, 2013) and With Invisible Rain… Continue reading Polly Atkin

Jo Clement is a writer, editor, and educator.  Jo holds a practice-led Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Newcastle University and was awarded an inaugural AHRC Northern Bridge scholarship. She is currently a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Northumbria University (Leverhulme 2021-2022). In 2012 she received a Northern Writers’ Award (New Writing North) selected by Paul… Continue reading Jo Clement

John Agard was born in Georgetown, Guyana. His love of language began in school where his favourite subjects were English, French and Latin. His collections include Half Caste (2005), We Brits (2006) Clever Backbone (2009), Alternative Anthem (2009) Travel Light Travel Dark (2013), Playing the Ghost of Maimonides (2016) and The Coming of the Little… Continue reading John Agard