Part two of our meet the Joy//Us poets feature

Normally I wouldn’t be plugging the book-after-next so soon, but with the crowdfund going, I’m sharing info on there, and thought I’d share it here too!

(Without the crowdfund it will be difficult to market the book and that makes it harder to sell, and makes it harder to stay in business.)

These are the poets in Joy//Us who we have published before, although not necessarily poetry!

Alexander Williams is a jazz singer, and host of the popular Dial Up Open Mic Events. In addition to his regular open mics, he stages an LGBT+ History Month open mic every February, and a Black History Month open mic every October. He is author of Secular Verses, a collection of humanist poetry featured monthly in Humanistically Speaking magazine.

Cherry Potts is the Director of Arachne Press, for whom she is editor/co-editor of most of our anthologies, and runs the annual literature and music festival Solstice Shorts. She is the author of a Lesbian fantasy epic and two collections of short stories, and winner of the Quill LGBTQ+ Prose award 2023

Conway Emmett is a fat, queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent poet who was born and lives in South Wales. They worked in higher education for many years, and later as an independent consultant, researcher and writer. They recently came back to creative writing after a couple of decades away. They often use their writing as a way to understand themself, their experiences, and the social world.

Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British author and poet of Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage whose works have received praise from Bernardine Evaristo and Malorie Blackman. His novel in verse, The Black Flamingo, about a Black gay teen finding his voice through poetry and drag performance, won the Stonewall Book Award and was shortlisted for numerous further prestigious awards. His poetry collection, There is (still) love here, explores acceptance, queer joy and the power of unapologetically being yourself and fully embracing who you are.

Jane Aldous  is an Edinburgh based poet who returned to writing poetry later in life.  She has been commended in several competitions and her poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She has had two collections published by Arachne Press, the second of which was a lesbian love story set in 1960s Edinburgh told in 70 poems. She is currently working on a third series of poems which tell a more contemporary and mysterious tale.

Jeremy Dixon is a poet and maker of Artist’s Books. He was born in Essex and moved to the Vale of Glamorgan as a teenager, living there for over 45 years. His poetry has appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Found Poetry Review, HIV Here & Now, Impossible Archetype, Lighthouse Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Roundyhouse and other print and online magazines. He has been published several times by Arachne Press, including his debut pamphlet IN RETAIL (2019) and in the recent bilingual Welsh/English anthology, A470: Poems for the Road/Cerddi’r Ffordd (2022). We published Jeremy’s first full collection, A Voice Coming From Then in August 2021 and it WON the poetry category for Wales Book of the Year English Language Poetry…

JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer disabled writer living in London. They have four solo pamphlets published and two collaborations, encompassing poetry, prose and experimental work. They have been widely published and anthologised, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Forward Prize.

Kate Foley is a widely published, prize-winning poet who has read in many UK and European locations. She was president of the Suffolk Poetry Society until 2022.  Her first collection, Soft Engineering was short-listed for best first collection at Aldeburgh.  Her working life has ranged from delivering babies to conserving delicate archaeological material, and she also became Head of English Heritage’s scientific and technical research laboratories. Although she has always written poetry it wasn’t until Kate gave up the day job that she began to publish more widely.  She now lives with her wife, between Amsterdam and Suffolk, where she performs, writes, edits, leads workshops and whenever possible works with artists in other disciplines.

Once voted “most likely to start the revolution” Rick Dove is a progressive poet and activist from Southwest London. Arriving on the spoken word scene in 2015, Rick has performed across the UK and internationally, with performance credits including The Wandsworth Arts Fringe, the Edinburgh Fringe, Greenbelt Festival, and Shambala Festival.

Dubbed “one to watch” by TS Eliot Prize winner Roger Robinson, Rick has published two collections with Burning Eye Books, Tales From the Other Box (August 2020), and Supervillain Origin Story (Coming May 2023), and was crowned the Hammer & Tongue UK Poetry Slam Champion at the Royal Albert Hall in July 2021. Equally at home on a stage, a page, or on a march, Rick has a vision of a fairer world and he wants to take you with him.