We’ve introduced you to the poets who have offered rewards, the poets we’ve published before and the debut poets, now the first half of the biggest group, experienced (indeed well-known!) poets who are new to publishing with us.
Annie Kerr is a working class lesbian writer with poetry published in journals and read live on BBC Radio 3 by Juliet Stevenson. She was selected for New Writing South’s Mentoring Programme for Working Class Writers, their Writer’s Place Poet’s Programme and selected for masterclasses with Mark Doty. She loves walking and sketching in wild places.
Aoife Mannix is the author of four collections of poetry, two pamphlets, four libretti and a novel. She has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live. @aoifemannix
Desree is an award-winning spoken word artist, writer and facilitator based in London and Slough. Currently Artist in Residence for poetry collective EMPOWORD, Desree explores intersectionality, justice and social commentary. Poet In Residence for Glastonbury Festival 2022, producer, and TEDx speaker, Desree has featured across the UK and internationally, including Sofar Sounds, Royal Albert Hall and Bowery Poetry – New York. Following the sell-out of her first self-published pamphlet I Find My Strength In Simple Things (2017), Burning Eye Books published the pamphlet in May 2021.
Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell was awarded the Northern Writers’ Debut Award for Poetry in 2022. Her latest pamphlet, ‘Breaking (Out),’ was published by Selcouth Station. She has been published in journals including Fourteen Poems, New Welsh Review, Shearsman Magazine, Strix, The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat and Tears, Tears in the Fence, And Other Poems and The Alchemy Spoon, has longlisted for the Leeds Poetry Prize and Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition, and shortlisted for the Ironbridge Festival Prize.
Elizabeth Gibson is a writer, performer, and workshop facilitator in Manchester. Elizabeth has been a recipient of the New North Poets Prize from The Poetry School and a Developing Your Creative Practice Grant from Arts Council England, and has been commissioned by Manchester Poetry Library, Manchester Literature Festival, Superbia at Manchester Pride, The Portico Library, Islington Mill, Oldham Coliseum, and Yorkshire Dance.
Garnett ‘Ratte’ Frost is a dyslexic transman with an English BA from Wirral. He is also an ink and wire artist, though not at the same time. He co-facilitates the Merseyside LGBTQI+ Creative Writing group held monthly at various locations across Liverpool. Published in Writing on the Wall’s (WOW) TranScripts, Moving Foreword, Write Minds and Surface/Below anthologies.
Helen Bowie (they/she) is a queer writer, charity worker and PhD student based in Glasgow. They have published two pamphlets, Exposition Ladies with Fly On The Wall Press, and WORD/PLAY with Beir Bua Press, and featured in anthologies and magazines including Re:Creation, Magma, Under the Radar and The Book of Bad Betties.
John McCullough lives in Hove. His book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds, was published with Penned in the Margins and won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize for Literature as well as being shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. His most recent collection, Panic Response, was a Book of the Year in The Telegraph and one of The Times’ Notable New Poetry Books of 2022. It includes the long poem ‘Flower of Sulphur’, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.
Joshua Jones (he/him) is a queer, autistic writer and artist from Llanelli, south Wales. He co-founded Dyddiau Du, a NeuroQueer art and literature space in Cardiff. His fiction and poetry have been published by Poetry Wales, Broken Sleep Books, Gutter and others. He is a Literature Wales Emerging Writer, 2023, and is currently working with the British Council to connect Welsh and Vietnamese queer writers. His debut, Local Fires, was published November 2023 by Parthian Books.
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