Category: Participants

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

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

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

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

Naush Sabah is Editor and Publishing Director at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, a print periodical described by the TLS as ‘intellectually lithe and provocative’ with a ‘dynamic and incisive critical section’. Her writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, the TLS, PN Review, The Dark Horse, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere. Last year, she… Continue reading Naush Sabah

Books by JL Williams include Condition of Fire (Shearsman, 2011), Locust and Marlin (Shearsman, 2014), House of the Tragic Poet (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2016), After Economy (Shearsman, 2017) and Origin (Shearsman, 2022). Published widely in journals, her poetry has been translated into numerous languages. She has read at international literature festivals and venues… Continue reading JL Williams 

Kitty is in her first year studying Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She was commended in the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2020 and won the year 12-13 category of the 2021 GDST Laurie Magnus Poetry Prize.