Spotlight Poets

There are a lot of amazing poets out there and what we would like to do is to draw your attention to some of our favourites. With that in mind, we will be featuring a poet each week as part of the 'Spotlight Poets' series. We hope you like their work as much as we do.

Louise Peterkin

Spotlight Poet #50 is the brilliant Louise Peterkin. Louise is a poet and editor from Edinburgh. She is a recipient of a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust. She is the co-editor along with Rob A. Mackenzie of Spark: Poetry and Art Inspired by the Novels of Muriel Spark (Blue Diode Press, 2018) and she is assistant poetry editor for the long running poetry magazine The Interpreter’s House. Her poems have appeared in many publications including The Dark Horse, Magma and The North. Recently she was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition. Her first collection of poetry The Night Jar was published by Salt in 2020.

Name: Louise Peterkin

Hometown: Edinburgh

Collections/pamphlets titles: The Night Jar, (Salt 2020)

What are you currently working on?

A second poetry collection. It will contain an extended sequence about a writer recovering from a mental breakdown who takes up a residency in a haunted house on the Suffolk coast. It’s essentially a supernatural horror film in poetry form but also investigates themes of depression, addiction, dysfunctional relationships and the creative process itself.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

It’s such an interesting feeling when you discover a poem you really wish you had written. It’s like the most benign form of envy – really it is intense admiration and a renewed wonder in the possibilities of the art form itself. It usually has the effect of motivating you to write rather than throwing your pen down in dismay (well mostly!) 

I wish I had written almost anything by Jen Hadfield. And Judith by Vicki Feaver – I write a lot of character monologues and that is just a perfect example of the form – seething with passion but so controlled and skilfully sustained. And Cow by Selima Hill – she takes a fantastical conceit and imbues it with such relatable yearning – who hasn’t wanted to escape the reality of their life at some point?

What is your first poetry memory?

I remember in primary school our teacher reading out Tam O’Shanter for either Burns Night or Halloween. I remember being thrilled by the vivid description of the graveyard revelry. The bit that stayed with me was the line “Two span-long, small, unchristened babies” I remember thinking I haven’t been christened! It pervaded my thoughts for weeks. A profound sense of impending doom hung over me until something else came along to fill me with dread and trepidation – that’s how it usually worked!

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

It would have to be Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems. She is my favourite poet and this is a substantial tome - It contains Ariel, The Colossus, Crossing the Water and Winter Trees and some juvenilia, notes and prose.

Rick Dove

Spotlight Poet #49 is the excellent Rick Dove.Rick is a progressive poet, storyteller and activist whose work extends across page and stage, blending styles, both old and new, to examine societal and personal change and these forces interact as we grow.  A regular performer on the London poetry scene since late 2015, Rick has been published in numerous poetry zines, the national press, was highly commended at the BBC Edinburgh Poetry Slam in 2018, The Hammer & Tongue London Slam Champion in 2019, and the UK Slam Silver Medallist in 2019.

Name: Rick Dove

Hometown: London

Collections/pamphlets titles: Haigha's Noosphere Canticles (WCH Publishing 2017), Tales From the Other Box (2021) 

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on a new collection on thought experiments, and a pamphlet and fringe theatre piece about Evelyn Dove (1902-1987), my great aunt and the first black woman on the BBC radio. 

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies) by Adrian Mitchell, the craft, the message, its timeless quality. People often argue that there is a trade off to be made between craft and accessibility, this poem proves that this is not the case.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Percy Bysshe Shelley, I love his lyricism (who doesn't have a soft spot for Ozymandias) and his politics were fairly radical and progressive for his day, so I think we would have a lot to discuss. Also, we share a birthday which would be handy for drinks... 

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

I would say to younger poet me, "Don't sweat too much about the choices you make in your career". There are always going to be niggling doubts about which poems to include in a collection, which magazine to submit a piece to, so don't take any of it too seriously. Concentrate on growing as an artist, "do the work", and you'll get there. 

Olga Dermott-Bond

Spotlight Poet #48 is the fabulous Olga Dermott-Bond. Olga is originally from Northern Ireland. She studied English at the University of St Andrews and is an assistant head teacher at a secondary school in Warwickshire. She has always loved reading and writing poetry, and over the past five years has been dedicating more time to her writing. She has two daughters, and motherhood has shaped and influenced many aspects of her work. Memory, social and political history and female identity spark her interest as a writer and are prevalent themes in her work.

A winner of Candlestick Press’ competition for 10 Poems about Breakfast in 2019, the BBC Proms poetry competition in 2019 and Poetry on Loan competition in 2020, Olga enjoys experimenting with different poetic forms, and has collaborated with a range of local artists as part of Warwickshire Open Studios to create ekphrastic poetry in response to their work. Her new pamphlet 'A Sky Full of Strange Specimens' is out with Nine Pens Press now. 

Name:  Olga Dermott-Bond

Hometown:  Originally Comber, Co Down in Northern Ireland – these days I live in Warwickshire, Shakespeare’s county!

Pamphlets: My debut pamphlet is called ‘apple, fallen’ published in 2020 by Against the Grain Press

What are you working on at the moment?

 I am currently enjoying writing about whatever takes my interest. At the moment this ranges widely: Irish myth and folklore, historical and political issues and how they resonate with contemporary life, and the female body). I am thinking about what the shape of my first full collection might look like. 

What advice would you give to your young poetself

I would give my young poet self so much advice: (would I listen?!). I only really started writing in earnest five years ago – twenty years too late perhaps! So, I would tell myself to GET WRITING and remind myself that time is short: find the minutes from somewhere and find the joy! I would also tell my younger self to connect with other writers, ask for help, and find many different ways to walk the line between total humility and the belief that your words matter. 

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

This is a difficult one to answer, as I suppose we get to meet little fragments of dead poets when we read them, but if I had to choose one I might say Dylan Thomas. His poetry is so inventive, lyrical and beautiful, and I never tire of reading of listening to ‘Under Milk Wood’. I don’t think he would find me very interesting company, but perhaps we could spend a few hours in his writing shed in Laugharne and then take a stroll round the village, and he could tell me where his ideas grew from. 

What is your first poetry memory?

I always enjoyed writing from when I could first read and write - my mum has uncovered some very ‘early work’ of mine recently while sorting though piles of old books in lockdown! I do remember reading ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen when I was about ten in primary school.  I think it was the first “grown up” poem I had ever encountered and I remember being totally struck by the vividness of the description. Something in the power of the language captivated and moved me – and I have been hooked ever since. 

Day Mattar

Spotlight Poet #47 is the enigma that is Day Mattar. Day is a cheeky queer poet and performer from Liverpool. They facilitate writing workshops with the Queer Bodies poetry collective, of which they’re the co-founder. Day’s poems come from the body, they use poetry as a tool to explore links between the psychological and the physical, the somatic and the sensual. Can a poem make you jump? Is your heart beating faster?

Name: Day Mattar

Hometown: Liverpool

Collections/pamphlets titles: Springing from the Pews

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on the manuscript for my first collection, and a long-form sequence ‘Body, Turned’, exploring episodes of dissociation when I was a teenager. This feels like a natural progression from Pews, which records the cause, and now I get to write about the effect. Lucky me… the writing is genuinely quite scary, it feels a lot of the time like ‘horror poetry’, so much of dissociation feels like possession. I’m enjoying working in a new form, too. The shape of a poem is as much metaphor as the language inside.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

 Sharon Olds taught, and continues to teach me, that I could rely on the power of simple language to manage the ‘bigger’ things. Early in my writing I had this idea that the more abstract the subject (love, death, trauma) the more overwrought metaphor, and this can work for some poets, but I think I respond to Old’s ‘image-ination’, her plain and direct, almost imageist, response to the experiences of her childhood.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Frank O’hara, so I could flirt my way into his apartment, count his freckles, and drink his coffee. He wrote my favourite love poem in the world, so I’d plant a kiss on him for every line.

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

Same advice I give myself now, which is to write and read daily. I don’t do it. I’m doing it this week though - self-isolating with covid, so I have no excuse, and I’ve finished 4 poems in 3 days. Anyone can write poetry! But not everybody is. Write, read, write, read, write, write, read.

Bryony Littlefair

Spotlight Poet #46 is the excellent Bryony Littlefair. Bryony is a poet, community worker and workshop facilitator living in London. Her poems have appeared in various magazines, most recently Poetry Ireland, Magma and Poetry Wales. Her pamphlet Giraffe won the Mslexia prize in 2017. She was shortlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation prize in 2018 and 2020 and in 2019 received the Moth Retreat Bursary Award. Her first collection Escape Room will be released with Seren in 2022 and is funded by Arts Council England.   bryonylittlefair.wordpress.com

Name: Bryony Littlefair

Hometown: Watford

Collections/pamphlets titles: Giraffe (2017) – Seren Books

What are you currently working on? I’m finishing my debut collection Escape Room, which will be released with Seren in early 2022.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

Marie Howe. I remember coming across a snippet of her work while I was browsing around Tumblr and it just blew my mind wide open:

‘the sky darkening from light to heavy grey
And why shouldn’t I be happy, and why shouldn’t we argue –‘

I think it was the juxtaposition of the idea of being happy and the idea of arguing. Conventionally – in psychology, philosophy, art - they don’t sit alongside each other - or at least I hadn’t seen them sat together before. Plus the backdrop of a dramatic sky with changing weather. Those two lines hinted that life was so much more complex and in-flux, so much more difficult-in-a-good-way than I could know, and there was a comfort in that. All her poems are like that – consolation and difficulty inseparably together. I also love the biblical and spiritual references as I grew up attending church with my family, though I am an atheist now.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

There are so many. Goodtime Jesus by James Tate, it’s so cheeky. Or The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye – I find that line ‘Tell them you have a new project. It will never be finished’ so beautiful.

What is your first poetry memory?

I wrote a poem called ‘A day in a life’ when I was about 9 or 10, which used a day in a person’s life as a thinly-veiled and clunky metaphor for a person’s entire lifespan (I remember it ended with ‘And then I slowly dropped to sleep…’ to signify death). I had to read it out to the class, and my teacher cried. I was a really shy and inoffensive child so I don’t think I’d ever made someone cry, at least not on purpose. I thought cool, let’s do that again. 

Michael Conley

Spotlight Poet #45 is the fabulous Michael Conley. Michael is a writer and teacher from Manchester.  His poetry has appeared in Rialto, Magma, Interpreters House, Butcher’s Dog, Strix, among other magazines. His first pamphlet, ‘Aquarium’ was published by Flarestack.  He also writes short stories and flash fiction, and his prose collection, ‘Flare And Falter’, was published by Splice and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize.

Name: Michael Conley

Hometown: Manchester

Collections/pamphlets titles:  ‘Aquarium’, ‘Flare and Falter’ 

What are you currently working on? Since my latest poetry pamphlet was accepted for publication by Nine Pens, I’m turning back again to prose and working on some new flash fiction pieces for another collection.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

“Lying On A Hammock On William Duffy’s Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota” by James Wright. For the perfect unwieldy title, for the famous gut-punching twist in the last line, and for the alchemy of literally turning horseshit into gold.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

I can’t really think of a dead poet who I could confidently say would be interested in meeting me. It would probably just be really awkward.  I’d like to tell Edna St. Vincent Millay she was the best sonnet writer in English since Shakespeare, but then again I imagine she probably knew that already.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Collected Poems’.  I’ve had that collection for about 10 years and now have a tradition where I take it with me on every holiday I go on, partly because she writes so well about travel and partly because I know I’ll invariably find something brilliant in it that I hadn’t spotted before. It’s constantly rewarding to come back to. I’d love to be able to observe the world in the way she did.

Jake Wild Hall

Spotlight Poet #44 is the excellent Jake Wild Hall. Jake is one half of Bad Betty Press, the host of Boomerang Club and winner of the PBH 2016 Spirit Of The Free Fringe Award. He has performed on BBC Radio and at festivals and literary events across the UK, including touring his debut pamphlet Solomon’s World—longlisted for Best Pamphlet in the 2018 Saboteur Awards. He co-edited anthologies The Dizziness of Freedom and Alter Egos (Bad Betty Press, 2018 and 2019). He is a multiple slam champion and his work has been published in magazines and anthologies including Hit Points (Broken Sleep Books). His second pamphlet Blank is out with Bad Betty now.

Name: Jake Wild Hall

Hometown: London

Collection/pamphlet titles: Solomons World and Blank

What am I currently working on: I've signed up for the London Marathon so mostly that. A few people have recently told me I should write more poems which is nice so maybe there will be something soon.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why? At first it was rap, I wanted to be a rapper so much as a kid. Then I found poetry slam and found it so absorbing. I think at the time the openness to talk freely about things that were hurting me and for people to clap was so needed for me. Since then I have really gotten into books and reading and communicating (again my pain) in more subtle ways.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written? the Fuck The Police poem by Sean Bonney

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why? Rimbaud because I'd reckon he'd be up for absinth and a laugh.

What is your first poetry memory? Watching was seeing John Agard read half cast, reading was a book called The Day I Fell Down the Toilet and performing was a night called Poetry and Pimms run by Dean Atta and Deanna Rodger.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be? This is such a hard question, picking one is so hard. Today the answer is POOR Caleb Femi.

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career? To be content because it's so easy getting lost in chasing things, I am so often unhappy with everything I do because it's not as good as what x person is doing. I hope I can just look at some of my work and not go I hate that.

What advice would you give to your young poetself? It's going to be alright and work twice as hard as you're working now.

An interesting fact about yourself? I really like socks with puns on them and I am an advocate for PeanutButter and cheese sandwiches.

Gill McEvoy

Spotlight Poet #43 is the brilliant Gill McEvoy. Gill won Keele University’s Inaugural Poetry Prize, 2007, and Havant Literature Festival 2009. Best of all was winning the 2015 Michael Marks Award for “The First Telling”  (Happenstance Press) It gave her a 2 week residency in Greece at the Harvard Centre for Hellenic Studies, Nafplion, just wonderful!! Hawthornden Fellow (2012).

Name: Gill McEvoy

Hometown: Yealmpton, Devon

Pamphlet title: from Happenstance Press: Uncertain Days, 2006; A Sampler, 2008; The First Telling, 2014. Collections. From Cinnamon Press: The Plucking Shed, 2010; Rise. 2013.  Hedgehog press: Are You Listening?  2020. Also one of 6 featured poets in Caboodle, Prole books, 2015.

Among the poets whose work I love are Louis MacNeice, Jane Kenyon, Basho, Rengetsu, Jaan Kaplinski, Thomas Transtromer. But tops is George Mackay Brown and if I had to be on a desert island I’d take his Collected Poems. I love his bright simplicity and his deep sense of place and history on his own island of Orkney. In fact what I really prize in poetry is simplicity, which is often more deceptively telling than elaboration. One of the reasons I won the Michael Marks Award, for a pamphlet about the aftermath of rape, was for the use of implied silence indicated by white space, and simple language. Martyn Crucefix called this pamphlet “terrific”, Who needs more than that?

The poem I’d really love to have written is Louis MacNeice’s poem “Mayfly”; wonderful, his line that the mayfly “goes up and down in the lift so many times for fun” - have you ever done that??? - and later the statement that the mayfly ‘never has a chance to grow up’. Poets shouldn’t grow up and lose their sense of fun.

I don’t think I really want to meet any dead poets; I’m sure they’re better off where they are. And if I had an ambition, apart from to continue writing, it would be the hope that perhaps some day someone would learn one of my poems by heart and keep it there.  I’d be thrilled by that if I ever got to know about it!

When I was three years old an aunt taught me to read using a very old-fashioned book about a cat sitting on a mat. I remember playing with those 6 words: The cat sat on the mat/on the mat the cat sat/ etc. Round and round the words went and if I think about it now, they were so simple.

Maybe that’s where my love of simplicity came from, because my maxim now is “take everything out that you can take out then see what’s left”. If I could have given that statement to my younger poet self I would have done so.

My greatest achievement in life is that, because I have always loved wild-flowers and trees I was passionate about learning their names as a child, and I’m pleased to say I can still name most of them even when they’re not in flower. I learned to Look, really look, and I treasure that. I’m not sure if that counts as an ‘interesting fact’ but as I haven’t gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel it will have to do!

Julie Irigaray

Spotlight Poet #42 is the excellent Julie Irigaray. Julie  is a French Basque poet. Her debut pamphlet Whalers, Witches and Gauchos was released in April with Nine Pens Press. Born and raised in the south-west of France, she writes about her native region as well as Paris, Dublin, Bologna and London, where she has lived. Her poems appeared in Ambit, Magma, Stand, The White Review, among others. She was the second and third prize winner of the 2018 and 2017 Winchester Writers' Festival Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing and is studying for a PhD in English Literature at the University of Huddersfield.

Name: Julie Irigaray

Hometown: Boucau/Bayonne (south-west of France)

Pamphlet title: Whalers, Witches and Gauchos

What are you currently working on ? 

I always plan projects five years in advance to keep me motivated, otherwise I feel lost. I’m preparing my first collection : I’ve finally found a theme, but it involves discarding some poems and writing new ones to create a sense of cohesion. So the book will probably not be ready before many years, but I prefer taking my time to make it as good as possible.

What is your first poetry memory ? 

Learning things by heart is key to French education, so my first poetry memory dates back from primary school, when pupils are forced to learn poems by heart to recite them in front of the class… I was extremely shy so this was utter torture. We were also required to copy the poems in a notebook and to illustrate them. I was very difficult to canalise at that age, so both my handwriting and colouring skills were quite « messy », and I have memories of the schoolteacher tearing pages off from my notebook until I’d write the poem with a perfectly neat handwriting… All these constraints made me hate poetry until the age of thirteen, when I discovered Arthur Rimbaud. He’s the one who reconciled me with poetry, which was quite of a challenge!

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written? 

Arthur Rimbaud’s « Le dormeur du val » (« The Sleeper in the Valley »), because this poem is a masterpiece in terms of craft. From a technical point of view, Rimbaud respected all the restrictions imposed by the French literary tradition: the alexandrine metre, the sonnet form, the caesura, the rhyme scheme… Yet he managed to make the poem compelling, and the end is so unexpected! Let’s not even mention the fact that he was barely fifteen when he wrote it and that this poem is still considered as one of the finest of the French language… I enjoy scanning « Le dormeur du val » out of sheer pleasure because I admire and respect the efforts Rimbaud put into it. I’d love to teach this poem to Anglophones.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why ? 

I feel as guilty as a parent who has to pick up her favourite child… Three poets have had a tremendous impact on me: Arthur Rimbaud, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Sylvia Plath. I’m doing a PhD on Plath and she’s the one who made me want to write poetry in English, but Rimbaud is the one who made me want to become a poet. I can also recognise myself in Rimbaud’s and Plath’s temper or background. So if I really had to choose between one of them, I might pick up Lorca instead because his personality was the opposite of mine ! He had such a radiant and magnetic personality… I would have probably fallen in love with him !

Casey Bailey

Spotlight Poet #41 is the awesome Casey Bailey. Casey is a writer, performer and educator, born and raised in Nechells, Birmingham and is the Birmingham Poet Laureate 2020 - 2022.

Casey released his debut full collection of poetry, ‘Adjusted’ in 2018 with Verve Poetry Press and his second collection 'Please Do Not Touch' will be published by Burning Eye in 2021. His play ‘GrimeBoy’ will be arriving on the stages of a number of theatres in 2021. Casey’s poetry has featured in a number of anthologies and he was commissioned by the BBC to write ‘The Ballad of The Peaky Blinders’ in 2019. In 2020 the poem was internationally recognised, winning a Webby Award. He has performed his poetry nationally, and internationally.

Casey was named as one of ‘Birmingham Live’s’, Birmingham ’30 under 30’ of 2018. He was also recognised in 2019 when he was made a Fellow of the University of Worcester and in 2020 he was named the Greater Birmingham Future Face of Arts and Culture.

Name: Casey Bailey

Hometown: Brimingham

Collections/pamphlets titles: Waiting at Bloomsbury Park (2017), Adjusted (2018), Please Do Not Touch (2021)

What are you currently working on? A few things. A collection (although maybe not ‘a collection’) of poetry around women/girls who have impacted my life, focusing predominantly on my mom, sisters and wife. Writing for a theatre piece told with huge puppet insects called Insect Safari, a piece with Birmingham Royal Ballet called Thousand Trades and my own play GrimeBoy which will be in theatres early 2022 having been pushed back due to Covid.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

The Way Home (Liz Berry, Black Country). I get that this quite a ridiculous answer, as this poem is written from the perspective of a mother, but this poem leaves me awestruck every time I read it and often in tears. There are parts where i resonate with the detail of the poem, and there are parts where I am just stunned by the skill of the writing.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Gil Scott Heron. When Gil Scott Heron spoke about the way in which we as poets, often endeavour to be difficult to understand, as if that provides legitimacy to our work, it really crystallised for the important balance that I try to strike between being poetic and being understood. I’d love to just discuss poetry with him.

What is your first poetry memory?

My English teacher reading John Agard’s ‘Half Caste’ to the group, and ending by looking at me and asking ‘was that alright?” I attached a lot of negativity to poetry during my time in that class.

Courtney Conrad

Spotlight Poet #40 is the talented Courtney Conrad. Courtney is a Jamaican poet. She is a current member of Malika's Poetry Kitchen. She was the Roundhouse Slam 2018 runner-up and a BBC Fringe Slam finalist 2019. She is an alumna of the Obsidian Foundation Black Poets Retreat and Roundhouse Poetry Collective. She has competed internationally in Philadelphia at CUPSI 2018. She has been a featured poet at Glastonbury Festival and StAnza Scotland's International Poetry Festival. She has been published by Bad Betty Press, Birmingham Literary Journal, The White Review and The Lumiere Review. She was shortlisted for The White Review Poet's Prize 2020 and Poetry London’s Mentoring Scheme and longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize 2020. Her work has been featured on BBC 1Xtra. Her poetry explores the intersectionality between Black, Caribbean, Queer, Christian and Womxn identities.

Name: Courtney Conrad

Hometown: Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica but based in Buckinghamshire, England.

What are you currently working on? Currently working on two debut pamphlet. This first pamphlet explores the intersectional politics of race, religion, gender and sexuality. So features poems like Roadkill and The Purge. It examines the utilization of Queerness and Religion as a means of seeking belonging. Also, showcasing some of the consequences of the "us" vs "them" dichotomy created between the LGBT+ and religious communities. Also, focusing on the internal and external conflicts that shape individual openness and repression; and touching on the Black and Caribbean community's relationship with the LGBT+ community. 

The second pamphlet explores my experiences with growing up in Jamaica as well as my migration experience to England. I am translating these experiences across space-time and between languages using both English and Patois. The poems explore joy, struggle, systemic corruption, injustice, recreation and partial belonging. The nostalgic vibes will recall events that shaped my sense of self, rebellion, inquiry & declaration. 

What advice would you give to your young poetself? There is so much to say, probably to use poetry as a tool for self-exploration. Don’t be afraid, to be honest with yourself on the page. Feel free to hold yourself and other accountable on the page. Apply for emerging writers development programmes, join National Poetry Library and GO TO MORE WORKSHOPS!!!!

An interesting fact about yourself – I played Water Polo for Jamaica. I never saw myself being in the creative industry, I was very much into playing sports. I did competitive netball, swimming and polo. I discovered poetry in my second year at The University of Birmingham. After I completed my year of being the Women’s First Team Captain there, I quit Water Polo to commit more time to Poetry. 

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be? I can’t choose, so probably between Forest Primeval by Vievee Francis and Teahouse of the Almighty by Patricia Smith. Both poets take my breath away. Their poems get under my skin, making me uncomfortable but in a good way. They make me want to write more boldly and take more risk. 

Barney Ashton-Bullock

Spotlight Poet #39 is the fantastic Barney Ashton-Bullock. I’m the poet / librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ pop-theatre-poetry collective and I narrate my own verse on the Downes Braide Association albums. I’ve had poetry published in a wide range of cult online poetry journals (SPAMzine, -algia, Babel Tower, Re-Side & Queerlings etc..), in both the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthologies to Leonard Cohen, in various Dreich pamphlets, in the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the 'Soho Nights' anthologies published by the Society Club Press who also published my first collection ‘Schema/Stasis’ in 2017. My latest poetry pamphlet ‘Café Kaput!’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2020.

Name: Barney Ashton-Bullock

Hometown: Christchurch, Dorset

Collections/pamphlets titles: 

‘Mottled Memoirs’ was part of the ‘Torsten The Bareback Saint’ performance programme pamphlet, SFE through Cherry Red Records, 2014. 

‘Schema / Stasis : The Torsten Verse Diaries’, The Society Club Press, 2017. 

‘Filthy, Rhymey Murk’ as part of the deluxe CD edition of ‘Torsten In Queereteria’, SFE through Cherry Red Records, 2019. 

‘Café Kaput!’, Broken Sleep Books, 2020. 

‘F**kpig Zeitgeist! - The Torsten Verse Diaries’ - SFE / Soho Poetry Nights through Cherry Red Records, 2021.

‘Bucolicism: Alt-lite lyrical verse for a post-pastoral England’ - SFE / Soho Poetry Nights through Cherry Red Records, 2021. 

What are you currently working on?

I work on a number of parallel projects. Firstly, I have written a second volume of accessible verse to accompany the Andy Bell is Torsten hybrid pop/poetry/theatre collaborative project that I manage. This is called ‘F**kpig Zeitgeist!’ and is a book containing further reflections in poetry of the life, and verse-form diaries of, the semi-immortal polysexual protagonist ‘Torsten’ played by Erasure’s Andy Bell in order to bridge the gap before we start work on our 4th album and theatre show.

Secondly, I am the poet in the prog-rock band, Downes Braide Association (DBA) and have collated my spoken word pieces on their ‘Skyscraper Souls’ and recent ‘Halcyon Hymns’ album into a pamphlet called ‘Bucolicism: Alt-lite lyrical verse for a post-pastoral England’, re-contextualising the fragments into their original longer form works. 

Those are both projects where I apply my poetry to external goals. I’m also gestating a collection of my own poetry work to follow on from the release by Broken Sleep Books of my ‘Café Kaput!’ pamphlet last year. I’m also keeping busy getting many new works published in a range of cult and queer poetry journals, particularly in Scotland and the US and reading at many a lockdown open mic! 

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

It has to be the poetry of Thomas Hardy, although I’ve refracted madly from his sensibilities since he opened up my poetic imagination, as I’ve immersed myself for many years exclusively in utterly contemporary poetry. 

Hardy unlocked the possibility of merging landscape, place and emotion. As such, he was the shoehorn into a psycho-geographic identification with Dorset; the county of my birth and the wellspring of my being, outlook and aspiration. The whole feeling of little people being lost in the enormities of passion, thwartedness and damnable hope; people on the cusp of wholesale societal change, stepping stones from an era of ‘knowing one’s place’, of rural isolation, of making do but being listless with an unarticulated want for more - and all the spiritual awakenings, aspirations and surrenders that come from that. Timeless, human ultra-dramas through unsparing concisions of words that herald the enormous challenges and passing joys of being human, and manifest it as a dynamic tension within a landscape that still resonates with both the beauty and savagery of the natural world. 

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

- Again, my answer belies the fact that I’m vastly steeped in the poetry of the here and now, but I long to meet Rupert Brooke to simply ask ‘Why?’

I’d like to walk with his manifestation, re-treading his oft-trod route from Corfe Castle station to Lulworth Cove, he’d alight the train there back in his ‘Bloomsbury Set’ days to meet his literary friends for holidays lodging above the West Lulworth post office, near the Dorset coast. He was such the poster boy of his generation, a truly beautiful man, whose heady idealism he never grew mature enough to have had challenged. I am awash in the beauty of his 1914 sonnets, their upbeat, almost pathological optimism, but, very aware that they present a grotesque, ideological screen that unintentionally, but very conveniently, masked the abject horrors suffered by the largely working class young men sent methodically to their grisly deaths by an establishment that was crueller, harsher, more vindictive and more heartless than any I’ve known in my lifetime.

That disjuncture, or rupture, of the poetic myth by the savage reality; that short-circuiting of reason by the conjured romantic lie of patriotic idealism must be one of the most deft ideological uses of the poetic form ever! So strong and binding and motivating and placating and assuaging his words were; comforting those on the homefront, inspiring those naïves bound for carnage with its deflection of certain death by the certitudes of righteousness and glory!

As I say, I just want to ask Rupert, ‘Why?’ and then, maybe make unbridled love on a Liberty picnic rug on a moonlit Durdle Door, (perhaps at the very spot I was a backing dancer in the Cliff Richard promotional video for ‘Saviour’s Day’ back in 1990!) before his ascension / descent / teleportation, whatever, back to the realms of dead poets!

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

- That I might fuse more successfully the spheres of pop, poetry and theatre that, in my mind and to my sensibilities, have always enriched one another. I’d like to think, by so doing, I wouldn’t be written off as not being a ‘proper poet’! Lol!  

To this end, my practise within the continuing ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ and ‘Downes Braide Association’ projects is central to my aspiration to conjoin the artfoms I most love.  I’ve grown to be at ease with the notion of there being different audiences for different projects. My ambition is that in being aware of those different audiences, that I don’t write exclusively for, or to, them; that I can function and be respected for the work I write as a poet myself as well and, to that end, ‘Café Kaput!’, published last year by Broken Sleep Books was very much only the beginning of a journey of a wonderment that I hope will see me out! 

Amara Amaryah

Spotlight Poet #38 is the excellent Amara Amaryah. Amara is a poet and travel writer of Jamaican descent, born in London. Her writing is interested in generational traditions, voice, spirit and black womanhood. She has been longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize (2020) and her poetry can be found published in Under the Radar magazine, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, the Hippodrome Young Poet’s anthology and translated in the Colombian publication Arcadia. Amara has performed her poetry both nationally and internationally. The Opposite of an Exodus is her debut pamphlet. 

Name: Amara Amaryah

Hometown: born in London but based in Birmingham - still deciding which/if any is home

Pamphlet title: The Opposite of an Exodus

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

I'd want to meet Mikey Smith who was a Jamaican dub poet and hugely influential in the dub scene here in the UK and the Caribbean. I came across Mikey Smith's poem 'Mi Cyaan Believe It' during my undergrad on a 'Caribbean Poetry' module and fell in love with his handling of rhythm and his impeccable timing. Mikey was tragically stoned to death very early in his career and if I ever got to spend time with him I'd love to find out about what else he would write if he had more time. 

What is your first poetry memory?

When I was about 10 my school entered me into a poetry competition and one of my poems (which I wish I could remember/find!) was selected and ended up being published. Whilst I don't remember the poem, I do remember how it felt to have my family gather around while I read and recited my words. From quite early I liked the fact that me or my words or the excitement of it was able to bring everyone together. In a similar way I actually feel like reading psalms or songs in my childhood church in Brixton shared that intention and energy; gathering to collectively enjoy the musicality of words.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

So difficult! I'm tempted to go with an anthology or journal or something just to cheat my way into having several voices. I think I would go for 'The Verandah Poems' by Jean 'Binta' Breeze not only for instruction on how to deeply revel in island life but also for the absolute range from humour to criticism, range in voice and landscape. 

I also hate to admit that I would sneak in something written by Sonia Sanchez - probably 'Shake Loose My Skin' or atleast I would tear out a few pages and keep them with me too!

Stuart McPherson

Spotlight Poet #37 is the brilliant Stuart McPherson. Stuart is a poet from Leicester in the United Kingdom. His work has appeared in online journals and anthologies, including Beir Bua Journal, After the Pause and Selcouth Station. His debut pamphlet ‘Water Bearer’ will be published in December 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. His work tends to explore the impact of family dysfunction and trauma upon ‘norms’ of masculinity and encourages a more open dialogue and openness around this challenging subject. He has also been known to write the odd cat poem from time to time.

Name: Stuart McPherson

Hometown: Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire

Collections/pamphlets titles: 

My debut pamphlet ‘Water Bearer’ will be published by Broken Sleep Books in December 2021

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a new pamphlet tentatively titled ‘Temporary Mother’. I’m writing it very much as a follow up from my debut, and it explores the process of Psychodynamic therapy from its very beginning to a point of individual progress. I guess you could say its very personal, but hopefully I’m framing it a way that’s accessible to all. My aim is really to encourage everyone (particularly men) to be open about mental health issues, and to see the empowerment in opening up and allowing yourself to be vulnerable.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

This is such a difficult question as there are hundreds! I think anything by the Korean poet Kim Hyesoon. Her work just has such a uniqueness and power. Its often surreal, but the points she makes actually come through very clearly which I think is a very difficult thing to achieve. If I had to pick one poem it would be “The Way Mummy Bear Eats a Swarm of Fire Ants” from the collection “SorrowToothPaste MirrorCream”. I would definitely recommend the Bloodaxe collection “ Its Ok, I’m Pig!!

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

For me, it would be Frank Stanford. I’ve always been in awe of his creative thinking and observation. The fact that he was so prolific must have meant that his mind was in overdrive 24/7. Id love to be able to talk to him just to see what he was like, whether he would be down to earth, or full of ego. I’d like to think he’d be one of those inspiring people who could just interject in a conversation with a few words and leave people speechless. I always feel sad that he died so young.

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

Probably the obvious stuff. The advice I still need to listen to myself from time to time. I think authenticity is key. Don’t write what you think other people want to read, just write what’s important to you. Write what makes you feel better, write what excites you. Write poetry that simply makes you feel lighter afterwards. Also, don’t rush. Poetry can often seem like a numbers game and you’ll often see people smashing out 40 submissions a week. Don’t get sucked into it. It doesn’t matter. There generally isn’t a big prize at the end of it all, just your own satisfaction that you created something meaningful to you, and that’s more than enough.

Anna Saunders

Spotlight Poet #36 is the irrepressible Anna Saunders. Anna has been described as ‘a poet who surely can do anything’ by The North, ‘a modern myth maker’ by Paul Stephenson, and Tears in the Fence said of her ‘Anna Saunders’ poetry is reminiscent of Plath – with all its alpha achievement and radiance’. The author of six collections, Anna’s new book is  Feverfew. (Indigo Dreams 2021). The collection has been described as  ‘rich with obsession, sensuousness and potency’  by  Ben Ray, and  ‘a  beautiful and necessary collection’ by  Penny Shuttle. She is also the Executive Director of Cheltenham Poetry Festival and works as a creative writing tutor and mentor,  communications specialist,  journalist, broadcaster and  copywriter/editor.

Name: Anna Saunders 

Hometown: Hoylake, Wirral. Merseyside. 

Collections/pamphlets titles: 

Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox (Indigo Dreams), and Ghosting for Beginners, (Indigo Dreams).

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on what will be my seventh collection – All the Fallen Gold, the title pertains to all that we have lost, but still cherish – perhaps people, places, ways of life. A few interesting characters and creatures are already popping up in it – Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks, Jung, the artist Samuel Palmer, the infamous arsonist Thomas Sweatt, the god of wine and dance Dionysus, Van Gogh, Sean Penn, a man who murders a puppeteer plus badgers, swallow, silver birch trees, and a host of places I miss very much right now – Liverpool, Venice, Wales, Cornwall ( I write this at the heart of the pandemic lockdown). 

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why? 

I am sure I would be invisible to him but Dylan Thomas, I think. The lush musicality of his work always affects and moves me. Poetry is at its most potent when it enables us to transcend our surroundings, and DT’s work takes me to the ‘heron priested’ shores, and the coruscating estuaries, and to a time that seems more innocent somehow, or at least quieter, slower and more in tune with nature than the period we are experiencing now. 

What is your first poetry memory?

I wrote a poem when I was eight, we had snow – which was rare in the coastal town I lived in. I read it to my mum I still remember how she praised it. This was incredibly encouraging. I didn’t do very well at school but went onto do an MA in Creative and Critical Writing which kick started my publishing record. 

What advice would you give to your young poet self?  

I would say trust in yourself, don’t listen to anyone who tells you to write poems that are overtly lyrical, or traditional – allow yourself to go into the wild, to write darkly, or subversively.  When I started writing I encountered a little bit of disapproval of some of my themes, and I wish it hadn’t worried me. I am now quite bolshy and write whatever I like. 

Damien B. Donnelly

Spotlight Poet #35 is the awesome Damien Donnelly. Damien B. Donnelly spent over 20 years working in the fashion industry in Paris, London and Amsterdam but had a passion for writing from a young age as a cathartic response to life and its challenges. He returned to Ireland at 45 with a long term-goal of setting up a Writer’s Retreat while focusing solely on writing. His debut poetry collection Eat the Storms was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2020 followed by a Stickleback collection in 2021. He has been widely published in journals for poetry and short stories. He writes about fragility, identity and connection.

Name: Damien B Donnelly

Hometown: Dublin, Ireland

Collections/pamphlets titles: 

Eat the Storms, debut pamphlet, September 2020.

Stickleback, Considering Canvases with Boys, January 2021.

Both published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press

What are you currently working on?

I am currently editing my first full collection which will be a poetic /photographic journal, based on my time in Paris, followed by a poetry collection about returning to Ireland, after 23 years away, and feeling like a foreigner, loosely entitled Back from Away.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

Joni Mitchell; the movement, the fluidity, the honesty, the breaks to look to other ways of expressing; painting, ballet, theatre, to not accepting being boxed into any one category, to slipping into jazz as if it was just the next step on the natural path. And, of course, for sitting in parks, in Paris, France, reading the news.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Arthur Rimbaud; to ask about the silence that came upon him so quickly, why he stopped writing, was it really just that he had forgotten how to? He began writing early in life but stopped at 20, was shot by his lover Verlaine in 1873, had his right leg amputated in May 1891 and later that year he died, aged 37. I wonder what he would have to say now, after, looking back. Does the voice return after the breath has departed?

What is your first poetry memory?

I remember being about 15, having torn up the carpet from my bedroom floor, spending three weeks sanding the floorboards down, trying to remove all their stains, painting over the varnish, all slippery under stocking feet and then covering it all over with old blankets so I could paint the walls red. My bedroom, the biggest bedroom in the house for the only child, painted red, the red rickety room where I spent most of my childhood, hiding, waiting, like a timebomb ticking, never knowing whether I wanted it to go off or whether the point was that I needed it to go off. I remember having a small notebook and slowly, over a few months, one summer, the lines started to be filled in with childish, juvenile thoughts but I still have it, I still open it and when I do I can still smell the varnish from the floor, the fumes from the red painted walls I thought I had painted merely to express myself, back then, at 14, 15, 16. I thought I was trying to say this is who I am; big, bright and bold but what I read now, in the lines on the pages, is that I was just crying out, desperate to be seen, petrified about being the seen, needing to be seen. I didn't paint my walls red because I loved colour. I painted my walls red because it was the only way to let out some of the insanity that was going on inside my head. Sometimes it flows across the page, sometimes on a canvas and occasionally across another wall. Again, I go back to Joni Mitchell; sometimes it was a lyric, sometimes a ballet and other times a painting, but never was it ever something to simply match in with the colour scheme of the sofa.

Ella Frears

Spotlight Poet #34 is the incomparable Ella Frears. Ella  is a poet and artist originally from Cornwall, now based in London. Her debut collection Shine, Darling (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Ella was a finalist for the Arts Foundation Poetry Fellowship 2019 and her poem Fucking in Cornwall was commended in the National Poetry Competition. She is a trustee and editor for Magma Poetry and has been poet/artist in residence for Tate Britain, the National Trust, conservation organisation Back from the Brink, K6 Gallery (no.17 bus Southampton), The Observatory (Spud, New Forest) and Royal Holloway University physics department where she was writing about the Cassini Spacecraft. 

Name: Ella Frears

Hometown: St Ives, Cornwall

Collections/pamphlets titles: Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity (Goldsmiths Press 2018), Shine, Darling (Offord Road Books 2020) 

What are you currently working on? I've just become Writer in Residence for the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, so I’m looking forward to producing a new body of work (poems probably) in response to their exhibitions this year.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

I never really experience that feeling of reading poems and wishing I'd written them. I love reading poetry by other poets because it takes me outside of myself and my voice. However, if I were to choose a few things that I think are wonderful, and must feel good to have written - they would be: Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, Jean Rhys’ Good Morning Midnight (I know, not a poem. But very brilliant and poetic), James Tate’s Dear Reader, Michael Earl Criag’s Tomatoes Disrespect Us, Kate Kilalea’s Hennecker’s Ditch. 

 If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Sappho maybe, or Emily Dickinson? Depends. Are they beamed into a modern-day dinner party at my house, or am I taken back in time to meet them? Or am I dead too? Seamus Heaney sounds like he would have been nice to meet. Likewise, I’ve heard great things about Michael Donaghy as a teacher and a person. Let’s have them all back.  

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

Not a collection but I’m obsessed with The Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics - I know it would keep me busy for years, trying out all of the different forms, styles etc. If I could glue that to an anthology like the Norton Anthology or one of the Bloodaxe Staying/Being Alive ones then I’d be all set.   

Gareth Culshaw

Spotlight Poet #33 is the excellent Gareth Culshaw. Gareth lives in Wales. His first collection came out in 2018 by Futurecycle called The Miner. In 2020, his second collection, A Bard's View is now released. He is an MA student at Manchester Met. He has been published in 150 places across the UK & USA. Gareth won his first poetry competition in 2019 at the RS Thomas Festival and has also been nominated for Best of the Net.

Name: Gareth Culshaw

Hometown: - Wrecsam

Collections:- The Miner & A Bard's View

What are you currently working on? - Top Secret. 

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

RS Thomas. I would have gone to his house in Hell's Mouth and knocked the door, then hid behind the wall. His humour was great and we would have gone bird watching up the hills. I cannot say I agree with everything he said about the Welsh public, but he is an interesting character, very much misunderstood. His Collected Poems by Dent is one of the most important books ever written by a Welsh writer. It's immense. 

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

Seamus Heaney's Seeing Things. A marvelous achievement. I have yet to read a book that comes close. It's better than most poet's selected! I think he was at his zenith during the late 80's to mid 90's. The Spirit Level is also amazing. Seeing Things is a collection I go back to to remind myself of what the standard is to become a great poet. 

An interesting fact about yourself - I'm Barney Rubble. 

Sue Finch

Spotlight Poet #32 is the brilliant Sue Finch. Sue was born in Kent and now lives with her wife in North Wales. She likes all kinds of coasts, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. Her first collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in Autumn 2020 with Black Eyes Publishing UK. Georgi Gill describes Sue’s work as having “the ability to beguile and shock”. Helen Ivory says Sue’s poems are “tender and straight talking yet can catch you off-guard with their slanted pathways” and Anna Saunders comments on Sue’s “fiercely original vision of the world”.

Name: Sue Finch

Hometown: Born in Herne Bay, now in North Wales

Collections/pamphlets titles: Magnifying Glass (Black Eyes Publishing UK,  2020)

What are you currently working on? My second collection which has the working title of ‘Silence’.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written? 

I would love to have written ‘Drawn Onward’ by Caroline Bird which is in the collection ‘The Air Year. I love the fact that it is not only an excellent poem, but that it is a palindrome. I love that feeling of reading a poem when it immediately makes me think “Ooooh that’s a cracking poem, I’m going to read it again (and again).”

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

 Sometimes I wonder what after dinner conversation would have been like with Sylvia Plath or Elizabeth Bishop. I revisit their poems often and would love to know about their poetry writing from that kind of conversation.

What is your first poetry memory? 

I remember a teacher telling me my sleeves were too long and rolling them up for me before I went up to the lectern at Harvest Festival to read my poem, ‘Harvest Time’. I can remember being so pleased that my Mum and Nan were sitting in the pews watching me. It was a rhyming poem and I had really enjoyed writing it. It had ten lines, but I can only recall eight of these and sometimes think the other two will pop back into my memory one day, but they haven’t yet and it has been forty years since I wrote it.

What advice would you give to your young poetself? 

Find your audience and share your work. Read your poems out loud more. (As my sister recently said to me, “There’s no point in writing a poetry collection and being shy about it”.)

An interesting fact about yourself:

I cried happy tears the first time I won a ‘meet and greet’ with Dolly Parton.

Charlie Baylis

Spotlight Poet #31 is the phenomenal Charlie Baylis. Charlie is from Nottingham, England. He is the Editor of Anthropocene. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize. His most recent publication is Swimming (the Red Ceiling Press). He spends his spare time completely adrift of reality. Charlie is the Poetry Editor of Review 31 and the Chief Editorial Advisor of Broken Sleep Books

Name: Charlie Baylis

Hometown: Nottingham, Nottinghamshire

Collections/pamphlets titles:

Swimming (Red Ceiling Press), Drag City (Broken Sleep Books) at first it felt like flying (with Andrew Taylor) (Indigo Dreams Press), Hilda Doolittle’s Carl Jung T'Shirt (erbacce press), Elizabeth (agave press)

What are you currently working on?

Many things!

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

I’ve been friends with Aaron Kent for a while now and whenever I see a good poem by him it stirs something in me, some kind of devilish envy that makes me want to write a better poem.

‘Levant 1919’ is a sestina by Aaron which moves with devastating fluency, it’s a really accomplished poem and it made me want to write a sestina. I had a go but it took me about an hour to grasp the structure, I could only write lines with the end word already set, there was no magic. It ended up being a disaster of a poem and I’ll never show it to anyone!

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Just one dead poet seems a little spartan. If possible, I’d like to propose the following itinerary:

• a morning stroll, to take the air, with Charles Baudelaire
• a hamburger and a malted (whatever a malted is!) with Frank O’Hara
• a hearty lunch with Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore
• bowling and a movie with Allen Ginsburg
• a candle lit dinner with Anne Sexton
• a nightcap in a cosy oxford pub with W.H. Auden

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

Don’t worry about who is in x magazine, who has won x prize, who has got a collection coming out with x etc. These things are immaterial, they only speak to a particular moment in time and are completely outside of your control. Have the self-confidence and self-respect to focus on your own writing and ignore external pressures. Nurture the ability asses your work by an inner metric, not some dubious algorithm of social media likes, mentions and other deceptions. Also, essentially, don’t lose sight of the fact you’re giving up a vast amount of time to things that won’t be read or remembered, not necessarily a bad thing as it gives you an enormous amount of freedom. Have fun with it!

Helen Kay

Spotlight Poet #30 is the brilliant Helen Kay. Helen’s poems have cropped up in various magazines such as The Rialto, Morning Star, Stand and The Interpreter’s House. In 2020 she was runner up in the Prole Pamphlet Competition. She curates a project called Poetry, Dyslexia, and Imagination, fb page Dyslexia and Poetry which aims to support neuro-diverse writers. She has a hen puppet-poet sidekick called Nigella who dominates her fb page!    

Name: Helen Kay

Hometown: Nantwich, Cheshire.

Collections/pamphlets titles:  A Poultry Lover’s Guide to Poetry (Indigo Dreams 2015)

This Lexia & Other Languages (v.press, 2020)

What are you currently working on?

Currently working on poems about the poet John Barlas who spent 20 years in Gartnavel Hospital ; the poems explore conflicting attitudes towards mental health over different time periods 

What poem by another poet would you liked to ahve written?

I would be happy to have written The Illegal Age by Ellen Hinsey because it is so politically relevant and multi- layered. I always write short poems and would love to write a book length sequence like this. I want to write poems that challenge and move people as this book does.

What advice would you give to your young poet self? 

Don’t wait until you are older to start writing; don’t let anyone put you off; ignore the nagging doubt that your poetry is irrelevant.  

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be? 

I know this is cheating a bit, I would take the Bloodaxe anthology, Staying Alive, because there are so many wonderful poems in it from all eras. The title seems appropriate too and I would feel that I still had contact with so many of my favourite poets.

John  McCullough

Spotlight Poet #29 is the exceptional John McCullough. John lives in Hove. His latest book of poems, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins) won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. In the Times Literary Supplement, head judge for the Hawthornden, Christopher Reid, described it as 'a rare literary phenomenon . . . a frank and militant declaration of joy.' John has won other awards including the Polari First Book Prize and his collections have been Books of the Year in The Independent, The Guardian and The Observer as well as his work often appearing in Poetry Review and Poetry London.

Name: John McCullough

Hometown: Brighton-and-Hove

Collections: Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019), Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins, 2016), The Frost Fairs (Salt, 2011).

What are you currently working on?

My fourth collection of poems has been keeping me busy this year. I'm grateful I began work on it last summer so already had a number of pieces plus ideas for other ones before the first lockdown in March. I've found the distraction helpful. This book's a little darker in content and more experimental in form than my previous collections and I've felt energized by the task.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

Setting aside the Spice Girls and Lady Gaga, in terms of poets I'd say it changes all the time. I always want each new collection to do lots of things I haven't done before, not just in terms of subject matter but also with regards to techniques and structures. I deliberately try to avoid writing a continuation of the previous book and, as a result, I'm constantly trying to push myself to discover a different configuration of writers whose poetry I feel passionate about. In the last few months, I've been getting into the work of two poets from across the Atlantic who aren't so well known over here, Kathleen Graber (USA) and Bruce Taylor (Canada).

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

The pre-twentieth century poet whose writing I return to most often is Emily Dickinson. I love the creativity of her phrase-making, the way she generates sparks from unexpected pairings. I'm not sure how up for meeting a new person she'd be but if I took a trip in a TARDIS to nineteenth century Amherst, I'd definitely like to slide a cheery note or two beneath her bedroom door. Maybe a few Hobnobs.

What advice would you give to your young poet self?

Take your time. Poetry is a slow-maturing thing. Often my poems spring from an image or phrase I jotted down in a notebook many years ago that, at last, I suddenly know what to do with. You have to be patient. Editing is usually a long, slow process too so it's good to try to enjoy that side of it as much as you can rather than attempting to get it over and done with quickly. (Not that I'm convinced I would have listened. Young John would probably have nodded a lot then immediately gone back to charging through melodramatic sonnet sequences about blood and death at five thousand miles an hour.)

Victoria Bennett

Spotlight Poet #28 is the brilliant Victoria Bennett. Victoria  is a disabled writer, poet and artist. She founded the radical rural collective, Wild Women Press in 1999. When she is not juggling motherhood and creative projects, she can be found howling in the hills of Cumbria with the Wild Women, her creative tribe. Her latest poetry pamphlet To Start The Year From Its Quiet Centre was published August 2020 (Indigo Dreams) and her memoir, All My Wild Mothers was long-listed for the Nan Shepherd Prize and Penguin WriteNow programme 2020. She is a recipient of a Northern Debut Award, a Northern Promise Award, The Mother’s Milk Writing Prize, and The Waterhouse Award for Poetry.

Name: Victoria Bennett

Hometown: Penrith

Collections/pamphlets titles:

To Start The Year From Its Quiet Centre (Indigo Dreams, 2020)

The following were all published by Wild Women Press

Byron Makes His Bed (2007)

Fragments (2006)

Fragile Bodies (2004)

Anchoring The Light (1999)

What are you currently working on?

All My Wild Mothers — a memoir about motherhood, loss, and planting

What is your first poetry memory?

As a writer, my first memory is writing a poem for a class assignment when I was around 6 or 7. In the poem, I imagined my father dead and what it would be like to not have him in my life, and being scared and alone in the dark, not knowing which way to go. My father was very much alive. I remember that the teachers were a bit confused by my hand-written and illustrated presentation and muttered something awkward in response about ‘couldn’t it be a bit more cheerful?’. This is something I have heard many times since! My mum kept the poem though, and I found it after she had died. As a reader, my first memory is the back of the airing cupboard at home, where my dad had scribbled Ezra Pound’s 'And the days are not full enough’. It is the only poem that I know by heart and I think it had a massive impact on me and how I saw life. I loved that there was a secret poem hidden in the airing cupboard.

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse

                Not shaking the grass.

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

I would like to write poetry that makes people say ‘that poem helps me understand something deeper about being human’. I think to do that, the poems need to be published and reach readers — so it would be very nice to have a publisher who wants to publish my work and readers who want to read it.

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

Don’t worry about the poems not being cheerful. Keep writing about what means the most to you. Your story has the right to exist and you have the right to write it. As you get older and experience more, you will come to understand that the joy and the sorrow go together, and reading poems that are sad can help us find a much needed place of peace and courage at times of difficulty. And I would write the following Rilke poem quote on the back of the airing cupboard door:

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.

― Rainer Maria Rilke

An interesting fact about yourself

I spent the first five years of my life living next door to Villa Diodati, temporary home of Byron, and the birth place of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Come to think of it, maybe that had an influence on my first poem!

Simon Maddrell

Spotlight Poet #27 is the enigmatic Simon Maddrell.Simon Maddrell was born in the Isle of Man in 1965, brought up in Bolton, lived in London for twenty years and then moved to Brighton & Hove in Feb. 2020.Simon writes through the lens of a queer Manx man, thriving with HIV.In 2020, Simon was first runner-up in the Frogmore Poetry Prize.  His debut chapbook, Throatbone (UnCollected Press) was longlisted for the Poetry Book Awards.  Simon also appeared in The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2019 (Black Mountain Press).Queerfella was Joint Winner in The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition, 2020 and will be published in December.

Name: Simon Maddrell

Hometown: Brighton & Hove

Collections/pamphlets titles: Throatbone (UnCollected Press, July 2020); Queerfella (The Rialto, Dec. 2020)

What are you currently working on?A collection of Manx-inspired Poems to pitch to a publisher & a poetic biography of Jonathan Blake, one of the first people to be diagnosed with HIV in the UK and now 71 years old.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

Anthony Anaxagorou for a number of reasons.  I was inspired by his development into poetry and the transition from spoken word to page.  We share the poetic themes of identity, small island heritage, colonialism, family, history and politics — albeit from different places and perspectives.  Anthony has taught me a tremendous amount through course, mentoring and editing support and I remain in awe of his ability to draw universality out of the particular and to do so seamlessly and seemingly without effort. 

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

This time, Jack Underwood

What is your first poetry memory?  

The story in the Half-rotten, half-new poem below

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series –– because I love all the African countries I’ve visited, especially Kenya which I’ve been to over fifty times and I’d love to learn from dozens of African poets what modern poetry is for Africa especially as I feel so hesitant to write from my own experiences there.

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

The more you know about poetry, the more you’ll learn how little you know.

An interesting fact about yourself

I’m a world expert on sand dams — having supported communities to build over 1,000 dams in Africa providing water for over 1 million people

Niall M Oliver

Spotlight Poet #26 is the fantastic Niall M Oliver. Niall M Oliver is an Irish writer who lives in Co. Derry with his wife and three sons. He has just released a pamphlet called 'My Boss', published by Hedgehog Poetry Press, and his poems have previously featured in The Honest Ulsterman, 192 Magazine, Fly On The Wall Press, Ink Sweat & Tears, Black Bough Poetry and others. He occasionally tweets, but mostly only about poetry and can be found at @NMOliverPoetry.  

Name: Niall M Oliver

Hometown: Derry, Ireland.

Collections/pamphlets titles: I have just released a pamphlet called 'My Boss' published by Hedgehog Poetry Press. It is a series of poems depicting the relationship between manager and subordinate in a dark humorous way. Selima Hill wrote to me recently saying she thought it was brilliant. I'll take that!

What are you currently working on? I'm working on a more personal collection, and would love to have it published within the next year or so. I tend to write a lot about family experiences, and as the father of three little boys, I don't have to look far for inspiration. Hopefully a kind publisher somewhere will take a chance on it.

What is your first poetry memory? When I was at primary school, the Headmaster (who was also my uncle) used to read the poems of Seamus Heaney to our class. Although I have to admit that at 9 years old it went over my head, and in hindsight perhaps Heaney was not the best choice as a first introduction to poetry for children, however given that our school was in the parish of Bellaghy, it was no surprise that he was the Headmaster's choice. Of course as I got older, my admiration for Heaney naturally grew, and the fact that I still recall my primary school experience over 30 years later, suggests that all was not wasted on me.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be? I recently picked up Aimless Love by Billy Collins, and as much as I'm loving it, it is too hard to pick just one, so I will bend the rules and take Neil Astley's Staying Alive Trilogy. First of all because 'Staying Alive' might be a pretty good mantra if trapped on a desert island, but mostly because it has got a bit of absolutely everything you need to live by in a poetry sense; all emotions are covered, and it contains many of the best voices our planet has known, including some of my favourites such as Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, Jackie Kay, Selima Hill and indeed Billy Collins.

What advice would you give to your young poetself?  I would advise to read as much and as often as possible, as this is the spark for much of my writing, and when writing, try to experiment and be brave with it. The technicalities of good poetry cannot be ignored, but you should be able to have fun with it and surprise the reader too. My younger self was very much into sport so I'd make sure and tell myself that poetry is way cooler than you'd think!

Julie Stevens

Spotlight Poet #25 is the excellent Julie Stevens. Julie has Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and used to be a teacher and successful athlete. Her poems tend to reflect the impact MS has on her life, as well as other topics close to her heart. She writes for both adults and children. Her poems have been published in various magazines, most recently The Honest Ulsterman, Dodging the Rain and Dreich. Her debut chapbook, Quicksand, came second in the Dreich Chapbook Competition 2020 and was subsequetly published. Her poem 'If I Can’t' was a winning poem in Bespoke Verse’s poetry competition in association with National Poetry Day 2019. www.jumpingjulespoetry.com

Name: Julie Stevens 

Hometown: Cambridge

Collections/pamphlets titles: 'Quicksand' Dreich (2020)

What are you currently working on?

I am currently putting the finishing touches to my second pamphlet, no title as yet and submitting my first full collection Treading Water. It builds on Quicksand with many powerful insights into my disabled life with MS, both moving and funny, that everyone can relate to.

What is your first poetry memory?

My first memory is how I used to love learning poems to recite for drama auditions, school concerts, and other performances when I was a child. T.S Eliot’s Macavity the Mystery Cat and later poems from Shakespeare’s Macbeth were favourite choices. Open mic started here.

What advice would you give to your young poet self?

Read as much poetry as you can. Keep reading and read some more. Write honestly about what pulls you in. Keep writing and edit later. Get the ideas down. Always jot down ideas that come to mind, so you have them for future poems. I’m always putting them on my mobile for my next writing session. Send poems to magazines, enter competitions and don’t worry about the outcome. Good news will come.

If you could take one collection to a desert island, what would it be?

Crow by Ted Hughes. The darker the better.

An interesting fact about yourself

I performed near Morten Harket of A-ha on Saturday Superstore when Keith Chegwin’s Delivery Van visited our town. An important fact for a teenager. I gave Nick Cave some of my poems when talking to him at a concert. He put them in his jacket pocket. An audience member heard and I ended up reading poems on their podcast!

Khaled Hakim

Spotlight Poet #24 is the brilliant Khaled Hakim. Formerly working in film and TV, Khaled  was the first British-Asian experimental poet in the 1980s & 90s, working with semi-improvisatory performances. Largely refusing to publish at the time, he abandoned both writing and film in the new millennium to become a Sufi student and musician. He returned to writing after a decade and has published Letters from the Takeaway, The Book of Naseeb, and The Routines: 1983-2000. A new book To the Hitchhiking Dead is slated for 2022 release.

Name: Khaled Hakim

Hometown: Birmingham

Collections/pamphlets titles: Letters from the Takeaway (Shearsman 2019), The Book of Naseeb (Penned in the Margin 2020), The Routines: 1983-2000 (Contraband Books 2020)

What are you currently working on?

I've just completed a book-length poem 'To the Hitchhiking Dead' which was planned and part-drafted over 30 years ago when hitchhiking through Europe in the 80s.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

I described completing a book-length poem 'To the Hitchhiking Dead' shelved/abandoned 30 years ago. When I belatedly, reluctantly returned to the insignificant poetry world after my silence, I wanted to know what the vangardistes were doing these days. And I found a new online PDF zine produced in Seoul, and the very first poem of its first issue had a long poem called 'The A1' by Richard Parker. It was like reading my abandoned poem, with the same cadences and Romantic visions. I later met him and told him his poem had convinced me there was no point to completing my poem. He demurred, and somewhere last year I found I wanted to revisit the dozen notebooks to piece it together. Richard Parker wrote a version of my poem, and then I wrote my poem.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Homer. I prefer dead poets to living poets. The deader the better. Homer because I was taken by Milman Parry's insights into oral composition/bardic performance. I later learnt Turkish Ottoman Sufi music and I suspect I would recognize the rhythms and modes of Homer's musical performance.

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

To complete the poetry that I must write before I'm dead

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

My new book-poem 'To the Hitchhiking Death' is a dialogue between the young poet and the present poet. I couldn't say anything to the young poet that he would listen to. I wrote some lines since excised: 'I had to enter th skins of a moning narsissist to folow th thredd of luve -- is this prigge th father of me -- O son yore gonna be th death of me'

An interesting fact about yourself

I gave up writing to enter a long period as practising Sufi student and 'accidentally' ended up as a Daf player (Sufi framedrum). As my first books started coming out, I was still primarily known as a musician, but that's changing.

Fiona Larkin

Spotlight Poet #23 is the exceptional Fiona Larkin. Fiona  was born in London to Irish parents. Her debut pamphlet, A Dovetail of Breath, was published by Rack Press in 2020. Her poems have featured in Magma, The North, Perverse, Under the Radar, New Boots & Pantisocrasies and elsewhere, and she was highly commended by the Forward Prizes 2019 for her poem ‘Rope of Sand.’ She manages innovative poetry events with Corrupted Poetry, with whom she has guest-edited the forthcoming issue of Finished Creatures. She tweets @fionalarkin

Name: Fiona Larkin

Hometown: Kingston upon Thames
Pamphlet: A Dovetail of Breath
What are you currently working on? I’m developing a couple of new pamphlets, which
might come together as a collection or might stand alone - it’s all quite fluid at the moment.

What poem by another poet would you like to have written?

I began writing poems about seven years ago. The poem which sparked that desire to write was ‘Irena of Alexandria,’ by Michael Donaghy, for its wit, its surreal imagery and its voice - it showed me what contemporary poetry could do - so yes, I’d like to have written it!  I find that the poets whose work inspires me - Zaffar Kunial, Deryn Rees-Jones, Mary Jean Chan, Sasha Dugdale - are, like Donaghy, expert in transforming traditional forms.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

It would be a time of stripping back to what’s essential. I’d take the collected Louise Glück, bare lyrics to draw my eye upwards.

What is your biggest ambition for your poetry career?

It took me so long to discover the writing. My biggest ambition, which I think many of us share in this most difficult of years, is simply to continue. Let us not lose it.

Arun Jeetoo

Spotlight Poet #22 is the fantastic Arun Jeetoo. Arun is a poet and educator from Enfield, North London. He is a wanderer and a compassionate soul, known for his dirty realism style, provocative imagery, and dark humour. His work appears in The London Reader and LUMIN Journal amongst numerous print and online magazines across the world. His poetry received second place in the John Hopkins Prize (2016) and was shortlisted for the Erbacce Prize (2020). His debut pamphlet I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night published from Waterloo Press is on sale right now. He tweets @G2poetry and Instagrams @g2poetry.

Name: Arun Jeetoo

Hometown:  Enfield, North London

Collections/pamphlets titles:

Debut pamphlet: I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night from Waterloo Press – a agile, sensual and achingly honest collection of contemporary love poems in the digital age. 

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a new pamphlet titled Life is Cumulative, which is about appreciating our everyday human experiences – from the mundane to the surreal – because each experience serves up a hard lesson learned about the self, our surroundings and our world. I have yet to send it out to poetry publishers, so here’s hoping someone gives it a home!

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

‘Everything Changes’ by Cicely Herbert – I admire this poem for Herbert’s masterful structure and fixed form that reinforces the message that the choices we make as humans, good and bad, have the power to change everything from the minute to the catastrophic. 

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar – a brilliant poet whom I admire so much I could read her debut collection a thousand times! And each time, I learn something new about The Partition of India in 1947; her identity; descriptions of her father and much more. The collection will make a great companion anywhere I go… or anywhere I end up stranded. 

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

I started writing song lyrics at thirteen because I was in a band (lead singer and keyboardist) and only really transitioned into writing poetry at nineteen. So, my advice to my younger poetself is to cling even more to your secondary school English teacher and ask them for poetry recommendations for your age. READ READ READ READ READ. Reading poetry you don’t like might lead you onto a path where you discover poetry that ‘gets you’. That’s what I tell my students. 

Briony Hughes

Spotlight Poet #21 is the brilliant Briony Hughes. Briony  is a poet, visiting tutor, and doctoral researcher based at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is interested in kinetic movement in language, water bodies, the archive, and site-specific writing. Briony's publications include Dorothy (Broken Sleep Books,2020) and Microsporidial (Sampson Low, 2020). Her limited edition bookworks have been collected by bookartbookshop, Senate House Library, National Poetry Library, and the Foyle Special Collections at Kings College London. Briony is a founding member of the Crested Tit Collective and is currently the editor of Rewilding: an ecopoetic anthology.

Name: Briony Hughes
Hometown: Ipplepen, Devon
Collections/pamphlets titles: Dorothy (Broken Sleep Books), Microsporidial (Sampson Low)

What are you currently working on?
I am currently developing a series of object poems which address the 1940s and 50s testing of nuclear weaponry at the Bikini Atoll, alongside the design of the bikini swimsuit, and the 2015 development of a ‘pollution absorbing’ bikini. Within the poem, found language linkingto each of these moments is in freefall, suspended in water and subject to chance encounters, collisions, disruptions, and reverberations.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?
It would be criminal to not mention Redell Olsen in response to this question. Dell led the lectures in the ‘Introduction to Poetry’ course during the first year of my BA. Fast-forward four years and Dell led my MA in Poetic Practice and is now my current doctoral supervisor. She has been such a wonderful and generous mentor, teacher, and friend, and has helped me to develop my writing and creative practice in so many unexpected ways. Check out some of her collections! Film Poems (Les Figues), Punk Faun: A Bar Rock Pastel (Sub Press).

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?
Juliana Spahr’s Well Then There Now (Black Sparrow)

What advice would you give to your young poetself?
Ignore the rules. Tear the rules down, open yourself up to different possibilities and don’t be afraid to experiment (in every sense of the word). Find the small presses. Find the indie presses. Engage with presses which champion all voices. Write and find a community and write some more. Throw rhyme out of the window and do something different. Language is fun.

Clint Wastling

Spotlight Poet #20 is the excellent Clint Wastling. Clint’s  poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies like Blue Nib, Dream Catcher, Orbis and Dreich. His novel, The Geology of Desire, is an LGBTQ thriller set around Whitby in the 1980’s and Hull during World War II. He also has a sci-fi novel: Tyrants Rex set 3000 years in the future, both are published by Stairwell Books.  Clint has worked with composers as part of Leeds Lieder Festival and toured his one man show, The Poet as a Geologist.

Name: Clint Wastling

Hometown: Beverley

Collections/pamphlets titles:  My first collection is Layers from Maytree Press

What are you currently working on? I’m working on a series of poems charting the River Hull from its source to meeting the Humber at the city of Hull. My family farmed in the area for many generations,  so it’s not just about landscape. There’s also the edits on  the next draft of my novel Stalin’s Bear to do and a publisher to find!

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

The poet Pat Borthwick had a major impact on my poetry. Attending her Stanza sessions over many years, I learnt all sorts of skills: the shape of poems and the importance of space. Where a poem begins and killing your babies by which Pat meant removing the best words/ phrases when they didn’t work for the greater good of the poem.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

I’d love to share a few beers with Walter de la Mare. I love the way he weaves that ghostly touch into poems like Silver and The Listeners. I am keen on reading his ghost stories as well. Seaton’s Aunt is a good one to start with.  I read The Lord Fish recently and enjoyed the elemental use of water. I’m partial to writing a ghost poem myself, though very few of them make it into print!

What is your first poetry memory?

 My first poetry memory is writing about the sea. The sea, the sea, where does it end?  Was the title/first line. I entered this poem, aged 12, for a local competition and won first prize!  I lived  a five minute walk from Scarborough’s North Bay so most weekends and holidays I’d be exploring the area. I could see the castle and sea from my bedroom window. 

An interesting fact about yourself  -- I was looking for fossils in a sandstone layer beneath Scarborough Castle and lost my footing, tumbling some thirty feet, landing miraculously unharmed. The experience made me determined to become a geologist.

Ella Duffy

Spotlight Poet #19 is the brilliant Ella Duffy. Ella is a poet originally from Manchester. Her work has appeared in The Rialto, The North, Ambit and the Guardian, among others. Her debut pamphlet, New Hunger, was published by Smith|Doorstop in May 2020. Her second pamphlet, Rootstalk, will be published by Hazel Press in November 2020.

Name: Ella Duffy

Hometown: Manchester

Collections/pamphlets titles: New Hunger (Smith|Doorstop, 2020); Rootstalk (Hazel Press, 2020).

What are you currently working on? I’ve spent the last few months finishing my second pamphlet, Rootstalk, which will be published by Hazel Press in November 2020. It’s a single long poem made up of five voices, some from myth, others from historical accounts, all reimagined. The lives of these characters are shaped by their search and discovery of the ghost orchid, one of the rarest wild orchids, which spends most of its live underground. Writer webpage: elladuffy.co.uk

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

My first thought was ‘The Fish’ by Elizabeth Bishop. Then I remembered Edwin Morgan’s poem ‘Midge’, which is fiendishly brilliant - “Sisters, I smell supper, / and what is more perfect than supper?”. Then there’s ‘Flies’ by Alice Oswald, which opens with the killer line, “This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence”. That said, if I’d written them, I wouldn’t have the same joy of reading them. Probably worth it though…

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

I might have to go with more Alice Oswald and her collection Falling Awake. I always come back to it feeling as if I’m reading it for the first time.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Sappho. I think we’d have a laugh together.

Nigel Kent

Spotlight Poet #18 is the excellent Nigel Kent. Nigel is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet (2019), author of four collections/pamphlets, and an active member of the Open University Poetry Society, managing its website and occasionally editing its workshop magazine. He has been shortlisted for several national competitions and his poetry has appeared in a wide range of anthologies and magazines. His latest publication, Psychopathogen, has been nominated for the 2020 Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets

Name: Nigel Kent

Hometown: Evesham

Collections/pamphlets titles: Saudade, Psychopathogen, Thinking you Home, A Hostile Environment.

What are you currently working on? I’m currently working on two publications: a collection of ekphrastic poems entitled ‘Whispers in the Gallery’ and an as yet untitled collaboration with photographer, Nick Browne,  in which the images are not literal illustrations of the poems but make their own complementary statement

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

If you’d asked me that question only a couple of weeks ago, it would have been ‘A Rainy Morning’ by Ted Kooser from ‘Delights and Shadows’ in which he describes a woman in a wheelchair skilfully manoeuvring herself through the street in the wind and rain. However, I have just recently discovered the poetry of Richard Jones and I would now choose his poem, ‘The Waiting Room’ from ‘The Blessing: New and Selected Poems’. Jones and Kooser share an ability to see significance in the ordinary: they notice the beauty, the courage, the suffering and the heroism in everyday personal experiences and do so in a direct, understated yet elegant style. ‘The Waiting Room’ is typical. Jones transports the reader to a doctor’s surgery where the sense of isolation of patients is vividly realised through accessible, relatable, resonant poetry: the sort of poetry I try to write myself.

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

I think my advice would be to read poetry to help find your own voice and not to make evaluative judgments about your work. I started writing poetry at sixteen and wrote a lot until I went to university. Studying the modern greats of poetry, however, undermined my confidence: I questioned what I was trying to do, giving up and not seriously writing poetry again until I was in my sixties! I think if I had followed my advice, I would not have wasted all those years.

An interesting fact about yourself

I had my first poems published at the age of 17 in an anthology called ‘All People are Poets’ for which I was paid…yes, paid.. with a ten shilling postal order, which I never cashed believing it would be the first of many. In fact, it is the only time I have ever been paid cash for a poem published in an anthology! Different times.

Clarissa Aykroyd

Spotlight Poet #17 is the talented Clarissa Aykroyd. Clarissa is originally from Victoria, Canada. She spent a few years in Dublin and now lives in London, where she works as a publisher. Her poems and translations have appeared in UK and international journals, and her pamphlet Island of Towers was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2019.

Name: Clarissa Aykroyd

Hometown: Victoria, BC (originally); London, UK (now)

Collections/pamphlets: Island of Towers (Broken Sleep Books, 2019)

What are you currently working on?

I'm working on having something to work on. In the meantime, I'm trying to learn Russian, and it's going quite well.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

There are many possible answers to this question, but one which often comes to mind is 'The Spaces of Hope' by the Serbian poet Ivan Lalić. Although I have only been able to read it in the English translation by Francis R Jones, it is a poem which I could just imagine myself writing if I were having a particularly good day (or year).

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, and why?

I actually met the Canadian poet PK Page once, very briefly, at a reading in my hometown of Victoria about ten years before she died. I took a Canadian Poetry class as part of my English degree at the University of Victoria, which really expanded my horizons - PK Page was one of the writers I discovered and she became one of my favourite poets and a major influence on my writing. Her poem 'Stories of Snow', in particular, is a touchstone for me. Although I did meet her once, I would have loved to have spent more time talking with her about literature and life. If I can cheat and add a couple more: I would give much for even five minutes talking with Paul Celan about poetics, pain and silence. And I'd like to think that Keith Douglas would have tried to flirt with me. 

What is your first poetry memory?

I remember writing a poem when I was about six years old, about a horse - and it was in French. In case this makes me sound overly precocious, it was because in my Canadian school I was enrolled in a program called French immersion, which enabled me to become fluent in French over the years. I also illustrated it. It is a very long time since I have written a poem in French, and even longer since I illustrated a poem, but at least I still write poetry in English and occasionally translate poems from French into English! 

Richy Campbell

Spotlight Poet #16 is the fabulous Richy Campbell. Richy is a writer based in Manchester. With language, he wishes to capture noticeable detail, dream-like apparitions and the idiosyncrasies of human beings. He has performed his work at the Poetry Cafe in London, the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and Huddersfield Literature Festival. In January 2020, his first collection of poetry, Lovely Peripheries, was published by Live Canon. In addition to his own literary pursuits, he co-edits Sideways poetry magazine. He exists digitally on Twitter (@richyacampbell) and Instagram (@lovelyperipheries).

Name: Richy Campbell

Hometown: Rugeley, Staffordshire

Collections/pamphlets titles: Lovely Peripheries (Live Canon, 2020)

What are you currently working on? I am working on a sequence of poems based on a strange walk I took near Cannock Chase, Staffordshire; a novel based on a dysfunctional small publishing house; a short story collection; and a stage play about a retired couple who go on a walk that goes very wrong.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

I don’t really yearn to meet artists that I love, dead or alive. However, I would like to have had a coffee with Elizabeth Bishop. She is my favourite poet. More importantly, she seemed like she’d be great company. She seemed to be unimpressed by establishment concerns, and had a dry wit, which is most interesting to me.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop. I never tire of those poems.

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

I would like to keep creating work that I am proud of. It would also be very nice if the aforementioned work was read, and enjoyed, by other people.

Liam Bates

Spotlight Poet #15 is the brillant Liam Bates. Liam is a poet originally from the Black Country, currently living in Birmingham. He’s been published in some places and not published in most places.

Name: Liam Bates

Hometown: Wednesbury

Collections/pamphlets titles: Working Animals (Broken Sleep Books) — a pamphlet -length sequence exploring labour and the relationships between human and non-human animals

What are you currently working on?

I’m currently writing poems with a view to assembling a first collection. I have some strong underlying themes in place atm but I’m not going to commit anything to posterity just yet.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

I came to poetry through music, and some of my biggest influences live at the intersection between those mediums. The artist I think I owe the most to, formatively, would be Adam Drucker, aka doseone. He’s a poet, rapper, singer, painter, producer and sound designer, and someone who has been producing exceptional and absurd art for decades. I wouldn’t say I write in a similar style exactly, but my ideas of what is possible from a creative output has been fundamentally shaped by his work. I once went down to London to see him perform live, and he stood behind a mouth-shaped podium playing drums on a sampler and having the audience chant at him to ‘Get a real job!’ and I hold that memory close to my heart.

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

Honestly, I’d just love to make any kind of a living from writing and reading and teaching about poetry. I’m almost 30 years old and through a combination of stark generational economic trends and chronic and periodically debilitating mental illness, the two of which I think should be considered causally intertwined, I’ve not yet worked a job that pays more than what’s technically classed as a ‘low income’. With the help of several generous elders, I’m beginning to get a sense of what’s possible, and so I’m determined now that if I’m going to make shit money for a while longer, it should be in service of doing something I love, and not to make some managing director a little richer.

What advice would you give to your young poet self?

I would love to let myself know earlier about the breadth of great contemporary poetry that’s out there. For a long while I had no idea, and had been soured on poetry all together, through what I see as the manifold failings of the British education system. It’s not possible to give my younger self advice, of course, but I’d love to be in a position one day where I can, on a bigger scale, help out others in the way that others have helped me.

Gaynor Kane

Spotlight Poet #14 is the excellent Gaynor Kane. Gaynor is a writer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She likes capturing images that might otherwise be missed, often with words, sometimes in photos, and occasionally on canvas. She has been placed in competitions and widely published in journals and anthologies. In 2018, The Hedgehog Poetry Press launched their Stickleback series with her micro-collection Circling the Sun. Gaynor’s poetry pamphlet Memory Forest, about burial rituals and last wishes, was published in 2019. Her debut full collection is due for release, also from Hedgehog Press, on 8^th September, which coincides accidentally-on-purpose with her fiftieth birthday. You can find out more about her here: www.gaynorkane.com

Name: Gaynor Kane

Hometown: Belfast

Collection/ pamphlet’s title: Circling the Sun (2018), Memory Forest (2019)

What are you currently working on? Promoting my debut full collection, Venus in Pink Marble, due for release from the Hedgehog Poetry Press 8^th September 2020. As I have a 9 to 5 job, I have limited time and I can’t always find the time to write. I would love to say I was working on my next collection, but alas…

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

I don’t think I can narrow that down to one person. I’m lucky that several local poets have encouraged me to find my own voice. However, when I started writing I did a class with Moyra Donaldson at the Crescent Arts Centre. Moyra introduced me to writers I hadn’t experienced before and motivated me to keep going. I went on to do several terms with Moyra and found it beneficial, particularly the critiquing sessions, her guidance and encouragement.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

This changes frequently depending on want I’ve recently read Today, it is the poem ‘The Hug’ by Tess Gallagher and this is my favourite bit: “ you want it / to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button / on his coat will leave the imprint of / a planet in my cheek”

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Eva Gore-Booth. I have so many questions I’d like to ask her, most of which are probably not about poetry. I think she grew up at a really interesting and important time.  I would like to hear about her suffrage work, her friendship with WB Yeats, what it was like to be the sister of Countess Markievicz and lots more.

What is your first poetry memory?

My parents reciting nursery rhymes to me. I also remember writing a poem in primary school about an old woman, it featured tree similes and a cat. In another, I anthropomorphised a pencil and took him on an adventure.

An interesting fact about yourself...

I’ve spent the night in a Garda Station in Dublin. It sounds worse than it was. My friend and I missed the last train back to Belfast when we were 18. We had very little money left and where walking the streets at dusk. The Garda Síochána stopped to check if we were alright and after a bit of crying we told them what was wrong. They tried to find us a hostel for the night but no one would take us in and we ended up spending the night in the medical room of Harcourt Terrace station. I have told this story at a local event called Ten X 9 and it’s here on their podcast if anyone wishes to listen.

Sunita Thind

Spotlight Poet #13 is the amazing Sunita Thind. Sunita is a British, Punjabi published poet with two published collections of multicultural poetry. She is a performance poet as well as Secondary English, History and Primary school teacher and workshop facilitator. She uses her poetry as a medium to voice important issues that woman have to deal with, such as  mental health, equality, cultural and social injustice, racism as well as achievements. She has suffered from depression, PTSD, GAD, anxiety and paranoia throughout my life as well as having Ovarian Cancer twice. She is a BAME, female, Punjabi, Malaysian, British writer, qualified Make Up Artist and model and writer. She is also an advocate for Ovarian Cancer and have fundraised or charities and completed charity fashion shows and she has been covered by BBC East Midlands, BBC Radio Derby, BBC Asian Network, Mirror, The Daily Express, Eastern Eye Magazine, Huffington Post and Macmillian Cancer Support as a media volunteer.

Name: Sunita Thind

Hometown: Derby

Pamphlet’s title: The Barging Buddhi And Other Poems (Black Pear Press)  The Coconut Girl (Wild Pressed Books - Upcoming in November)

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Sylvia Plath was a such an inspiring, strong and creative genius ahead of her time who changed the face of female poetry writing. The imagery she created was wonderous and mesmerising and I loved her novel the Bell Jar. It is sad and tragic how she died.

What is your first poetry memory?

Writing a poem that got published in an anthology in a school competition called The City Of Malaysia At The Festival of Lights in Year 6, I was so proud to get my poem in the book.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

Sylvia Plath's greatest works!

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

 I would love to get a literary agent and publish a novel and poetry collection with not only amazing indie presses but also the bigger more commercial ones and maybe Blood Axe books. The sky is the limit, write a memoir about my Ovarian Cancer and Covid experience, win a literary competition and travel and do readings and so on!

What advice would you give to your young poet self?

Get the Indie Mslexia Indie Press Guide it was invaluable to me when I was just starting out to submit my poems to magazines, getting them published and submitting my poetry collection to different publishers. Write what inspires you, what makes you passionate and keep note book with you always, I write everyday.

Serge ♆ Neptune

Spotlight Poet #12 is the tidal wave of brilliance that is Serge ♆ Neptune.Serge ♆ Neptune has been called ‘the little merman of British poetry’. His first pamphlet is 'These Queer Merboys' published with Broken Sleep. His work has appeared in Lighthouse, Banshee, Brittle Star and elsewhere. He is the creator and host of poetry broadcast 'Neptune's Glitter House for WayWard Poets'.

Name: Serge ♆ Neptune

Hometown: under the sea, somewhere in the English Channel.

Pamphlet’s title: These Queer Merboys

What are you currently working on?

I just finished a commission (can’t reveal much about that yet). I am working on new stuff and trying to organise my first full collection, making sure all poems communicate with each other to create a flow from beginning to end. There might be another pamphlet or two in the cards. I am also working on future episodes of my poetry broadcast ‘Neptune’s Glitter House for WayWard Poets’, which always requires a lot of effort.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

There’s been a few. Emily Berry no doubt. At the beginning most of my poems sounded super Berry-esque. I love the way she exposes power games and flaws in relationships. Richard Scott has been a huge influence, not only because his poetry melts my heart but, having been my teacher at Faber Academy and Arvon, he guided me and encouraged me to look at queerness in new and exciting ways. Anne Carson because she is a genius, does what she wants on the page and always leave me in awe of her skill. Her translation of Sappho’s fragments is another book which has proven fundamental to my development as a poet. Finally, Sylvia Plath and the Silver age of Russian poetry.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

Rebecca Tamás’s ‘Interrogation (1)’. It always sends chills down my spine.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

Sylvia Plath. ‘Ariel’ is another book which influenced me massively and I’d love to share a cuppa with her and simply chitchat about stuff.

What is your first poetry memory?

Reading a copy of Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs Du Mal’ and discovering that all my rage and pain could find their way onto the paper (I was a very angsty teenager, still am).

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

Sappho – If Not Winter (tr. Anne Carson)

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

World domination. Should that fail, I’ll be happy publishing a minimum of three full collections.

What advice would you give to your young poet self?

Stop overthinking things. Brush your scales. Don’t drown too many humans.

An interesting fact about yourself?

Merman, innit? I also studied Russian language and lit at university and worked as a translator (not a poetry translator) for a few years.

Cara L. Mckee

Spotlight Poet #11 is the excellent Cara L. Mckee. Cara is from Yorkshire but now lives on the west coast of Scotland. Her poetry has been published in places including Gutter Magazine, Brittle Star, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Queer Dot’s Queer Quaranzine. Her chapbook is  First Kiss (Maytree Press, 2020), which you can buy from Maytree Press or get a signed copy on Cara’s website http://skeletonarchitecture.blogspot.com.  

Name: Cara L. Mckee

Hometown: Ilkley

Collections/pamphlets titles:First Kiss, from Maytree Press, May 2020: https://maytreepress.co.uk/shop-poetry-book/

Writer webpage: http://skeletonarchitecture.blogspot.com.  

What are you currently working on?

I wrote a series of poems for the Scottish Writer's Centre and I didn't mean for it to happen, but they all had wee gods in them. I noticed that these little gods are coming up a lot in my work despite myself being pretty much godless, so I'm currently working on bringing them together into a new chapbook sized collection. 

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

I was hugely into New Model Army when I was young (still am), and I once attempted to sneak in late, to a big Joolz Denby gig at the Ilkley Literary Festival, wearing a lot of silver bracelets and clogs which I had spray painted silver. It wasn't a good outfit for sneaking and Joolz paused in reading her poetry to give me a good slagging off. I was determined then that I would have as much confidence as she showed, and inspired to bring the realness to my writing that she brought. I discovered that she'd been published by Bloodaxe, and I really wanted to get published by them too! 

More recently I've developed an obsession with Jacqueline Saphra whose work is blooming amazing. I love the way she uses form to hone her poems, and the incredible amount of craft that goes into something that might seem at first glance to be thrown together. I have been delighted during lockdown to have a chance to talk with her about just how much I like her writing, and she was incredibly gracious about it. I'm also always excited to read new issues of Butcher's Dog and The Interpreter's House. I find Jo Clement and Georgi Gill to be really interesting editors, I love the things they choose, and the collaborative way they work. 

What is your first poetry memory?

I won a poetry competition in primary school and had to read my poem at the Harvest Assembly which was in church. I had to read it from the pulpit, which was high up, and I was freaked out to be looking out at everybody. Happily my parents couldn't come, I think that would have pushed me over the edge! I don't remember the poem, I'm afraid. It most definitely rhymed. 

What is the biggest ambition for your poetrycareer?

I know poetry doesn't pay but I wish I could find a way to make it! I would love to spend more time reading and writing poetry and helping other people to write and to enjoy poetry. 

Matthew M.C. Smith

Spotlight Poet #10 is the brilliant Matthew M.C. Smith. Matthew is a Welsh writer from Swansea. His work is in Barren Magazine, Finished Creatures, Icefloe Press and Fly on the Wall. He is editor of micropoem journal, Black Bough. Twitter: @MatthewMCSmith @BlackBoughpoems Facebook: Matthew M C Smith (writer)

Name: Matthew M.C. Smith

Hometown: Swansea

Collections/pamphlets titles: Origin 21 poems

Writer webpage: https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/matthew-m-c-smith

What are you currently working on? 

I'm working on a second poetry personal collection of poetry and also completing editorial work for the two Black Bough poetry 'Deep Time' anthologies. My second personal book will either have a really ancient feel or be futuristic. I probably have two books worth of poems and should do the ancient one first.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

The most significant poetic influence was the writer who inspired me into poetry as a teenager and that was Jim Morrison, poet and lead singer of 'The Doors'. After reading their song lyrics and getting copies of 'American Prayer' and 'The Lords and the New Creatures', I never looked back. Dylan Thomas should also get a mention, too and another Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas.

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

To have a number of poetry collections for sale in high street bookshops and independent retailers; to travel to festivals to share my work, meeting other writers in the process; to meet more of the writers I publish in Black Bough. To eventually retire to a Greek Island and write, swim and lounge about all day in a house with views of sunrise and sunset. That's all I want.

What advice would you give to your young poetself?

Read more contemporary poetry. Don't read the same old poets over and over again - look at writers in the here and now.

An interesting fact about yourself

Two of my 40 bucket list goals: one was to run the London marathon for charity, which I did in 2017. The other was to write a poetry book. I self-published the book and won a poetry competition before I ever got a poem published. I did it the wrong way round.

Elizabeth Rimmer

Spotlight Poet #9 is the fabulous Elizabeth Rimmer. Elizabeth is a poet, editor for Red Squirrel Press and occasional translator. She has published three full collections of poetry with Red Squirrel Press. She is working on her next collection (due some time in 2021) reflecting on the experience and awareness of being ‘a person’ and what it means to be a human in space, time and community. She has also published a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Charm of Nine Herbs. Her website is www.burnedthumb.com

Name: Elizabeth Rimmer

Hometown: Stirling

Collections/pamphlets titles: Wherever We Live Now, in 2011, The Territory of Rain, in September 2015, and Haggards (2018) Red Squirrel Press

What are you currently working on? I’m currently working on my next collection. It’s going to be full of poems about dissociation and self-awareness, landscape, language, memory, family, and artistic expression.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why? Kenneth White. He lives in France and I don’t think he’s well-known in England so much, but he is the inspiration behind the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics. I like the wild mix of poetry, philosophy and psychology, and I liked his aesthetics – very spare, concrete and yet sensual poetry. I think some of his poetry has dated badly, but his philosophy has taken on a new lease of life among artists and writers and in fact anyone concerned about the climate change issues.

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be? Alice Oswald’s Falling Awake. I could be years working out what she did and how she did it, and I could walk around the island declaiming it without anyone complaining, because it is so good to read aloud.

An interesting fact about yourself: I lived in Sri Lanka for a few months in 1980-1, and the first house I stayed in, beside the lake in Kandy, was one D H Lawrence stayed in when he was there.

James Roome

Spotlight Poet #8 is the brilliant James Roome. James is a poet and English teacher from Manchester, UK. His first pamphlet, Bull, was published in April 2019 by The Red Ceilings Press. Recent work has appeared in Tears in the Fence, Anthropocene and Iamb. 

Name: James Roome

Hometown: Bury

Collections/pamphlets titles: Bull (Red Ceilings Press)

What are you currently working on? A full collection manuscript.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

Probably something by Frank O'Hara. Maybe, 'A True Account Of Talking To The Sun At Fire Island'. 'Darkly he rose' is such a beautiful line. That, or something like 'Briggflatts'. I'd love to be able to write like Bunting, but it just isn't in me.  

What is your first poetry memory?

This may be TMI, but when I was about four I had really bad constipation. Really, really bad. My parents said it was because I was always so excited to get back to playing, so I would never sit on the toilet long enough. I guess, over time, it built up. Anyway, after a trip to the hospital for some unpleasant procedures, my parents decided that they would need to think of a way to keep me on the toilet longer, so they bought a book of children's poetry. My mum would sit outside the bathroom, reading it to me through the door. I distinctly remember The Owl and the Pussy-Cat being in there, and also a re-telling of Gogol's 'The Nose' by Ian Crichton Smith. There was plenty of other great stuff too, but those two really stuck with me. 'The Nose' in particular was incredibly weird. I read Gogol's original story years later. It wasn't quite the same. 

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

It would be awful to have to choose one, wouldn't it? For endless rewards, I'd probably take Emily Dickinson's collected works. Her syntax is just so interesting, and her images are so surprising. I might also consider taking 'Whereas' by Layli Long Soldier. That had a big impact on me when I read it last year. Again, that's another collection that is just unbelievably rich and rewarding. Actually, no, I would take The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector. Technically, it's a novel, but to me it reads like a long prose poem. It's amazing. Everyone should read it. 

Naush Sabah

Spotlight Poet #7 is the wonderful Naush Sabah. Naush  was, for many years, an IT lecturer and community organiser. She recently completed an MA in Creative Writing, with Distinction, and now works as a freelance writer and editor. Her short play, Coins, was staged at The Rep and longlisted for the Pint-Sized Plays competition (2019). Heredity/ASTYNOME, a double micro-pamphlet box set, was published by Legitimate Snack earlier this summer. She is a trustee at Poetry London, Assistant Editor at Short Fiction Journal, and Co-founder and Editor at Pallina Press.

Name: Naush Sabah

Hometown: Birmingham (and thereabouts)

Collections/pamphlets titles: Heredity/ASTYNOME (Legitimate Snack, 2020)

What are you currently working on? I’m revising a sequence of forty poems I first wrote in the autumn of 2017 and which I tell people is about doubt and dissent, though I can’t be sure anymore how much those themes come through. I have a vision for it as an illustrated pamphlet so we shall see how that goes.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why? 

This is a difficult question since there are too many big influences for me to isolate one. In terms of those who have gone before, my greatest affinity is with the Victorian poets, Hardy and Tennyson. I think their melancholy and doubt, their musicality and form, all really enchant me on the level of pure pleasure foremost.

I’ve loved Hardy for Tess and there was really no way I wasn’t going to adore his little poems too. Tennyson’s 'In Memoriam' is, of course, a masterpiece but I love all his poems of myth and legend and the links there to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Beyond them, undoubtedly Frost is The Poet to me. The plainness of his language coupled with the almost mystical and mythic qualities he’s able to conjure in the space of a short lyric poem, this woody, earthy place that always feels other-worldly to me and magical. How does he do it?

Look at ‘A Cliff Dwelling’. Who could possibly predict where he’d take us from those unassuming first two lines? The lyricism and narrative movement in his poems makes them a place I want to stay and keep revisiting; there's something comforting and warm about how he carries you along, and yet the mood is still always slightly disturbing or disruptive, you’re left unnerved at some level and I want the tension of both those elements.

How these influences bears upon my own work is, I suppose, something for others to judge. I see myself as quite Frostian in the natural plainness of my poetic diction and take heart in him as a much-beloved model of that, of something I otherwise worry is unfashionable and too quiet a style to be taken seriously or noticed these days. 

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written? 

I’m currently obsessed with ‘Enter a Cloud’ by W.S. Graham. I’m fond of little three-stress lines in longer sequences (*cough* Heredity *cough*). The opening two lines in this are stunningly direct and unusual and really hook you in. The poem continues to surprise with its phrasing and imagery, its playful self-consciousness and that hilariously meta ending. Yet, all the while you can imagine, despite the surreal elements, lying on a hill gazing over this coastline between these two points and watching the clouds enter your line of sight and move and dissipate. I just love everything about it and in Graham’s work in general how foregrounding of dialogue and language and this sort of self-awareness enliven the poems and utterly disarm the reader. It delights me that it was written before I was born but the language feels so contemporary and fresh that, yes, I wish I’d written it today!

If you could take one collection with you to a desert island, what would it be?

I don’t buy single collections unless they're new books. All my favourites are in their collected editions that I buy in the cheapest available paperbacks. This is strange in a way because it means the poet’s work as a series of separate collections and the progress and change through a career and lifetime are sort of lost on me in terms of my experience of reading their work which is very much a process of dipping in and out their Collected. So, you’ve asked a question I can’t really answer! I think I would take my edition of Frost which is the Vintage edited by Edward Connery Lathem. It’s not even prefaced with an introductory essay but that is good enough for me and feels quite apt. I'd treat in the fashion one would take a prayer book or cherished love letters, which is to say with well-worn reverence and in the manner of a talisman.

Arji Manuelpillai

Spotlight Poet #6 is the brilliant ARJI Manuelpillai. He is a poet, performer and creative facilitator based in London. For over 15 years Arji has worked with community arts projects nationally and internationally. He is co-founder of children’s theatre company A Line Art and is an advocate for arts as a tool for change. Recently, his poetry has been published by magazines including Prole, Cannon’s Mouth, Strix, The Rialto and The Lighthouse Journal. He has also been shortlisted for the BAME Burning Eye pamphlet prize 2018, The Robert Graves Prize 2018 and The Live Canon Prize 2017. Arji is a member of Wayne Holloway-Smith’s poetry group, Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and London Stanza. Arji’s debut pamphlet ‘Mutton Rolls' was released with Out-Spoken Press.

Name: Arji Manuelpillai

Hometown: London

Collections/pamphlets titles: 'Mutton Rolls'

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

For me, it’s rappers like Biggie, Tupac and Nas that have had a big impact on my practise. But more recently, poets like Daljit Nagra and Matthew Dickman. But i’m off with the wind and wherever it rolls i follow.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

Singh Song by Daljit.

If you could meet any dead poet, who would it be, why?

William shakespeare of course!

What is your first poetry memory?

We had Leon Garfield, a writer and poet who came into my primary and I remember thinking that he had the best job i had ever heard of, he went from school to school reading his own book.

Jenny Mitchell

Spotlight Poet #5 is the amazing Jenny Mitchell. Jenny is joint winner of the Geoff Stevens’ Memorial Poetry Prize 2019, and winner of the Fosseway Poetry Competition 2020. She’s been published in several magazines including The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House and Under the Radar. Her work has been broadcast on BBC2 and Radio 4.

Her debut collection, Her Lost Language (Indigo Dreams Publishing) was selected as one of 44 Poetry Books of 2019 (Poetry Wales).

Name: Jenny Mitchell

Hometown: London

Collections/pamphlets titles: Her Lost Language (Indigo Dreams Publishing)

What are you currently working on?

I'm currently working on a new collection. Would rather not talk about it too much at this stage if that's okay.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

The Sea is History by Derek Walcott

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career? 

To be invited to read in Rome at least once a year. I've already performed at a poetry festival there and it was like heaven.

An interesting fact about yourself:

I've travelled through six African countries alone. It was a formative experience, and one day I'd like to write a collection about it.

Jonathan Humble

Spotlight Poet #4 is the briilant Jonathan Humble. Jonathan is a deputy headteacher in Cumbria. Before that he was a power station engineer, lettuce picker and painter in a corrugated card factory. His hobbies are beard growing and pointing at wild flowers. His poems for adults have appeared in a number of anthologies and other publications online and in print. His short stories and poems for children have been published in The Caterpillar, Stew and Amazing magazines. His work has been commended in the York Mix and Caterpillar Poetry Competitions. A new collection of his poems, Fledge, will be published by Maytree Press on July 31st 2020.

Name: Jonathan Humble

Hometown: The Port of Goole

Collections/pamphlets titles: My Camel’s Name Is Brian (TMB Books); Fledge (Maytree Press)

What are you currently working on? A resignation letter.

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

I am drawn to poems which appear deceptively simplistic and yet are crafted beautifully, evoking memorable imagery with lines that stay with you long after you’ve put the poem down. For me, Holly Singlehurst’s poem Hiroshima, 1961 was the stand out entry in the 2016 National Poetry Competition. Similarly, the excellent Mark Pajak’s Cat on the Tracks makes me look at my own efforts and motivates the search for poetry perfection.

What is your first poetry memory?

At the age of 16, I worked over the summer as a painter in a corrugated card factory where I became besotted with the owner’s beautiful daughter, Elise. I felt the need to write a poem and considered giving it to her but I worried she might laugh, so it remained a secret. It lies in a drawer at home somewhere.

An interesting fact about yourself:

I have been the Tripe Marketing Board’s Poet Laureate since 2014. Rossendale’s Sunday Morning Clog Market at Rawtenstall also has a place in my heart and I hold the same position of poetic esteem with them as with the TMB.

Amanda Huggins

Spotlight Poet #3 is the fabulous Amanda Huggins. Amanda is the author of four collections of short fiction and poetry. She was a runner-up in the Costa Short Story Award 2018, and her prize-winning story, ‘Red’ features in her latest collection, Scratched Enamel Heart. Her poetry chapbook, The Collective Nouns for Birds won a Saboteur Award in 2020. Amanda grew up on the North Yorkshire coast, moved to London in the 1990s, and now lives in West Yorkshire.

Name: Amanda Huggins

Hometown: Scarborough

Collections/pamphlets titles: 

Brightly Coloured Horses (Flash Fiction)

Separated From the Sea (Short Stories - Special Mention in the 2019 Saboteur Awards)

The Collective Nouns for Birds (Poetry - winner of the 2020 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet)

Scratched Enamel Heart (Short stories - contains the Costa prize-winning story, 'Red')

What are you currently working on?

My third novella, An Unfamiliar Landscape, and some individual poems that (hopefully) may be the start of another collection.

What is your first poetry memory?

The first poetry collection I owned was When We Were Very Young by A A Milne. I don't know where it came from, but I remember reading it with my mother when I was very young - and I still have the same copy! The earliest memory I have of writing a poem myself is when I wrote one for my Writer Badge at Brownies when I was seven or eight. It was called 'Night' and was all about owls and stars.

What is the biggest ambition for your poetry career?

Right now, I have no idea, as this year I've surpassed the ambitions I had and more! It was fabulous to see my chapbook published by Maytree Press in February, and then for it to win a Saboteur Award within the space of a few months was amazing. I would love to publish a full length collection someday, so we'll see!

What poem by another poet would you have liked to have written?

So many! I would love to have written 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' by W B Yeats - simply because it was one of my mother's favourite poems, and it has always been there in my life. I wouldn't mind taking credit for 'The Wasteland' by T S Eliot either; his poetry was a huge influence on me as a teenager. 'Small Kindnesses' by Danusha Lameris is a more recent favourite that I'd love to put my name to.

Matthew Haigh

Spotlight Poet #2 is the brilliant Matthew Haigh. Matthew is a poet from Cardiff. His debut collection, Death Magazine, was published with Salt in 2019. In the same year he published a pamphlet, Black Jam, with Broken Sleep Books. Matthew’s work has appeared in a number of anthologies from Sidekick Books, The Emma Press and Bad Betty Press, and his poetry was highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2020. He is co-organiser of the experimental poetry night CRASH in Cardiff.

Name: Matthew Haigh

Hometown: Cardiff

Collections/pamphlets titles: Death Magazine (Salt Publishing); Black Jam (Broken Sleep Books)

What are you currently working on?

Alongside Aaron Kent I’m currently working through submissions for an anthology of poetry inspired by video games, due to be published with Broken Sleep Books in 2021. Also, I’ve been in talks with Live Canon about editing an anthology of horror movie-themed poems. 

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

Without a doubt the biggest influence on my work is music. I wouldn’t say any one individual has influenced me entirely - it’s more an aesthetic, a movement. Artists that are making these deconstructed pop songs while experimenting with a post-humanist / futurist visual world. Artists such as Arca, SOPHIE, FKA Twigs… Also, Natasha Khan (Bat For Lashes) - the way she creates such heady, dreamy, vivid worlds with her music is a big influence on how I’d like my work to feel.

What is your biggest ambition for your poetry career?

I don’t know how people make a career out of poetry, really, because there’s no money in it. I work full time, so I don’t need to do this to survive. I’m happy just pottering along at my own pace, sharing my work with others and forging friendships with poets who have a similar ethic. Any ambitions I have would be quite grass roots - forming a collective of writers and artists with a shared interest in post-humanism / futurism would be cool.

What advice would you give to your young poet self?

It’s easy to say in retrospect, but my advice would probably be to not wait so long before trying to get a collection published? I was writing poetry for around 10 years before even attempting to get a pamphlet published - I just don’t think I believed I was good enough. People at all stages of their writing development probably suffer from imposter syndrome to some degree, but I suppose you can’t let it stop you.

Suna Afshan

Spotlight Poet #1 is the incredibly talented Suna Afshan. Suna  is Director of Pallina Press, Co-founder and Editor of Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, and on the Editorial Board of Broken Sleep Books. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Birmingham City University, and in 2018 she was awarded with the University’s Mercian Prize for her poetry. Suna’s poetry has appeared in Visual Verse, bath magg, and is forthcoming with Wild Court. Her most recent publication is the micro-pamphlet Belladonna, a 200-line poem, published with the Broken Sleep Books imprint Legitimate Snack.

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Name: Suna Afshan

Hometown: Birmingham

Collection/Pamphlets titles: Belladonna (Legitimate Snack, 2020)

What are you currently working on?

I’m tentatively working towards a first collection, centred around the formation of the very first consciousness, and consequent notions of godliness and annihilation.

Who would you say has had the biggest influence on your work and why?

T.S Eliot, undoubtedly. I read ‘The Waste Land’ at a very important time in my life—before I had even considered writing poetry at all, and I was utterly enamoured by its ambition; the allusion; the complexity; the obfuscation. I’ve kept the selected poems of Eliot within arm’s reach for years, and I feel its cognitive hold on the poetry I’ve written since—certainly, Belladonna.

What is your biggest ambition for your poetry career?

Once, while I was rather poorly and bedridden, I saw a James Cameron documentary on the arduous making of Avatar, that movie about blue aliens and genocide. In it he says something I’ll butcher and paraphrase here: ‘Set your ambitions at the highest possible level, so, even if you fail, you’ve still done pretty well!’ With that in mind, I’d like to humbly say the biggest ambition for my poetry career is to with the Nobel Prize for Literature. Failing that, publishing a first collection before the impending climate catastrophe would be good enough.

What advice would you give for your young poet self?

Inwardness is not a sin—indulging in it too much is.