Category: Participants

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

Grace Nichols was born and brought up in Guyana. After working there as a teacher and journalist, she came to Britain in 1977. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has published many books of poetry for both adults and children, including the bestselling, The Fat Black… Continue reading Grace Nichols

Jason Allen-Paisant is from a village called Coffee Grove in Manchester, Jamaica. At present, he’s a lecturer in Caribbean Poetry & Decolonial Thought in the School of English at the University of Leeds, where he’s also the Director of the Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. He serves on the editorial board of Callaloo: Journal… Continue reading Jason Allen Paisant

Stand-up poet and lo-fi theatremaker Jonny Fluffypunk has been dragging his art around the UK and occasionally beyond for over 20 years, deafly fusing bittersweet autobiography, disillusionment and wonder into an act that has established him as a firm favourite at gigs, festivals and housing benefit offices everywhere. He has two volumes of poems, micro-fictions… Continue reading Johnny Fluffypunk

Roger Robinson is a writer who has performed worldwide.  He is the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2019, RSL Ondaatje Prize 2020 and RSL Fellow.  He was chosen by Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced the Black-British writing canon.  His latest collection ‘A Portable Paradise’ was a New Statesman book of… Continue reading Roger Robinson

Born and grew up in Hong Kong, Jennifer is the author of several collections including Goldfish (Chameleon Press) and a pamphlet, Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl (Bitter Melon Poetry 2019). Her latest collection, 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press 2020)—which explores the complexities of history, migration and translation—has been named the PBS Wild Card… Continue reading Jennifer Wong 

Khairani Barokka is a Minang-Javanese writer and artist from Jakarta, whose work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis. Among her honours, she has been Modern Poetry in Translation‘s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an Artforum Must-See, UK Associate Artist at Delfina Foundation, and Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing… Continue reading Khairani Barokka

Nadia Lines is a 20-year-old poet based in Cambridge. She was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2019, and has won the Orwell Youth Prize and the Tower Poetry Competition. Her debut pamphlet, Stephen the Phlebotomist, is out May 2022 with Nine Pens Press.