Ten Poets Defend Their Cities from Giant, Strange Beasts

About

Jon Stone is a Derbyshire-born writer editor and researcher. He won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2012 and his collection School of Forgery (Salt 2012) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. As well as writing several shorter poetry books and co-editing a number of collaborative anthologies with Sidekick Books he has published a monograph Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Videogames (DeGruyter 2022). He teaches writing and publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. Kirsten Irving is a Lincolnshire-born London-based poet and voiceover and one half of the team behind collaborative press Sidekick Books. Her work has been published by Salt and Happenstance widely anthologised and thrown out of a helicopter. She has won the Live Canon International Poetry Prize judged competitions and taught courses on folklore in poetry. Kirsten's latest collection Hot Cockalorum was published in 2022 by Guillemot Press. From https://www.alicewillittspoet.uk: Alice is a writer editor and plantswoman from the Fens. She is the author of Something Light Written (Elephant Press 2023) Think Thing: an ecopoetry practice (Elephant Press 2021) With Love (Live Canon 2020) and Dear (Magma 2019). She runs The 57 Poetry Collective in Cambridge and is the editor of DIRT with Dialect Writers. She graduated with Distinction from the Creative Writing Poetry MA at UEA in 2018. She was shortlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize 2018 for the p0_EM experiment in fractal poetics. She collected climate rebel stories for Channel Mag and was delighted to co-edit Magma 78: Collaborations issue (Nov 2020). She believes in putting hope into action. She is a co-founder of On The Verge Cambridge actively increasing plants for pollinators throughout the city. River Cam Erasure is a protest poetry project raising awareness about damage to the Cam's chalk stream ecosystem. In Nov 2021 she was the grateful recipient of a DYCP grant from Art Council England to write her second collection. Calls To Me Longingly is forthcoming from Blue Diode Press in 2025. From https://www.the87press.co.uk/thehythe-open/3-poems-from-piddock-by-james-coghill: James Coghill is the author of Anteater (Goggles 2018) and Piddock and has had poems published in Blackbox Manifold Datableed and Tentacular as well as in anthologies from Sidekick Books. His ongoing preoccupations include animal studies ecology and early modern literature. He currently teaches at a specialist SEMH school. Kevin Reinhardt runs Vintage Poison Press. His debut collection was Welcome To Birdworld. He runs London's premier bingo-poetry-karaoke night Bingo Masters Breakout. From: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id=1176: Adam Crothers was born in Belfast in 1984 and lives in Cambridge. His Carcanet collections are Several Deer (2016) which in 2017 won both the Shine/Strong Poetry Award and the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize and The Culture of My Stuff (2020). From http://amyjophilip.uk: The North End of the Possible Amy Jo Philips second full collection of poems was published by Salt in 2013. The Ambulance Box her first book was published in spring 2009 by Salt; shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry 2010 the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award 2010 and the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2009; and highly commended in the 2009 Forward anothology. It followed two successful poetry pamphlets with HappenStance Press: Tonguefire (2005) and Andrew Philip: A Sampler (2008). Her work has also appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies most recently Coming & Going: Poems for Journeys (HappenStance 2019). A seasoned performer of her own work Amy Jo has given readings and led workshops throughout the UK from Orkney to London including an online course for the Poetry School in 2010. She has also written Sound and Rhythm a worksheet for the Scottish Poetry Librarys ideas box and her introduction to writing poetry is one of the most popular pages at the Crafty Writer. Amy Jo was born as Andrew in 1975 in Aberdeen north-east Scotland and grew up in a former mining village near Falkirk in the Scottish central belt. After leaving school she lived in Berlin for a short spell returning to Scotland studying linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. She now lives in Boness near Edinburgh. After working for the Scottish Parliaments official report for 18 years she was ordained in Scottish Episcopal Church and served her curacy at St Marys Cathedral in Edinburgh. She came out as transgender in 2021 and separated from her wife. Having returned to her old day job in the official report she currently serves as a non-stipendiary (i.e. unpaid) priest in her local Episcopal church. https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/authors/sean-wai-keung: Sean Wai Keung writes poetry performance and food-writing with a particular focus on migration community and cooking. He holds degrees in poetry from Roehampton University London and the University of East Anglia. Sean has facilitated workshops on food-writing and food-poetry for the Scottish BAME Writers Network Glasgow University and Renfrewshire Leisure amongst others. His published work includes you are mistaken which won the Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2016 and sikfan glaschu (Verve 2021) which The Scotsman described as joyful earnest and often funny. Sean also occasionally works in horror poetry having been part of the Haunted Voices anthology of Scottish Gothic Storytelling. He also devises performance work which often explores mixed-race identity and ESEA issues including with the National Theatre of Scotland and Tramway. From https://kymdeyn.com: Kym Deyn is an award-winning poet writer and fortune teller. Their pamphlets include Nine Arches Primers Vol. 6. Dionysia published by Verve Poetry Press and Unfurl a collaborative fiction experiment published by their press The Braag CIC. Otherwise their prose and poetry is widely published in a range of anthologies and magazines including Strange Horizons and Butchers Dog. They have been shortlisted for awards including the Brotherton Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize. They are one of the winners of the 2020 Outspoken Prize for poetry. They are a graduate of Durham University where they studied Classical Civilisations and Newcastle University where they received an MA in Creative Writing. From nickasbury.com/about: Ive worked in and around branding and design for 25 years. Since writing about purpose for Creative Review in 2017 Ive been a frequent commentator on the ethics and politics of advertising resulting in the 2024 book The Road to Hell (Choir Press). I enjoy public speaking about purpose creativity and writing. As a commentator creative writer and poet Ive written for Creative Review Design Week and The Guardian and been profiled in the New York Times Irish Times and Sydney Morning Herald. Im featured in The Copy Book: How Some of the Worlds Best Advertising Writers Write Their Advertising (Taschen) and I co-authored the latest edition of A Smile in the Mind: Witty Thinking in Graphic Design (Phaidon). Other works include humorous journal Perpetual Disappointments Diary (Pan Macmillan) three-year poetry project Realtime Notes described by critic John Self as the best chronicle of the 21st century and ongoing adventures in Tin Pan Alley-style songwriting at songwritings.substack.com. Im one half of UK creative partnership Asbury & Asbury with artist and former graphic designer Sue Asbury. Kat Addis lives in Brighton United Kingdom and is the author of Space Parsley (the87press 2021).