OUR AUTHORS
LISA SIMPSON
Lisa Simpson is poet from Manchester, UK. She has performed at the Altrincham Arts Festival and Poetry Reverb and has had her work published by Train River Publishing and the Black Cat Poetry Press.
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Lisa's poem 'In which she asks what are you scared of?' was commended in the Magma Poetry Competition in 2023, judged by Victoria Kennefick.
Lisa’s debut pamphlet ‘birdsong’ captures different aspects of life during the Covid pandemic through the lens of parenting, politics, mental health and nature.
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Instagram: @lisa.simpson.poet
BARRY HOLLOW
Barry Hollow lives in Bristol but was born and raised in Ayrshire, Scotland. He’s been published in various publications and journals and has been featured regularly on BBC Radio and is emerging on the spoken word scene in Bristol.
Barry's debut collection Viaducts and Riverviews explores the relationship with home and belonging, the nostalgia that comes from leaving home and the feeling of discovering a new one. Viaducts and River Views builds between its pages a sense of journey through an exploration of place, nature, self and the lyrical nature of language. Purchase a copy here.
CATHERINE BALAQ
Catherine Balaq is an award-winning writer and body psychotherapist. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and nominated for the Pushcart and Forward Prizes. She is co-editor of Black Cat Press. Her debut collection 'animaginary' was nominated for the Seamus Heaney Prize and the Pen Heaney Prize. 'Deathless' her second collection is publishing with Verve Poetry Press in October 2024. Catherine also writes novels and is represented by Donald Winchester at Watson Little. https://www.watsonlittle.com/client/catherine-balaq/
Catherine Balaq channels the daemon onto the page, summoning colour from darkness.
-Paul Lynch, Booker Prize winner, 2023.
'animaginary' is her debut poetry collection. animaginary is a journey through the archetypes of the subconscious. The beasts of the underworld hold our hopes and fears, life in one hand and death in the other. The collection moves through each incantation, entwining animism and psychology with the intention of personal alchemy. It ends with 'The World', eating its own tail in a metaphorical transformation.
The reader will meet the author in a mythical landscape which explores living and working through the darker side of the self in a Hecartic tradition. Animal spirits haunt through the collection as shapeshifters, bringing self actualisation in degrees both terrifying and rewarding. The poems speak of family, grief, gender roles, class and body politics.
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X: @catbalaq
Instagram: @catbalaq
JENNY MUNRO-HUNT
Jenny Munro-Hunt is a poet from Glasgow, Scotland. Her work has appeared in The6ress, Soor Plooms, Poetry Scotland and Heather: An Anthology of Scottish Writing and Art. She was longlisted for the Winchester Poetry Prize in 2022.
Her upcoming collection Ghost Kitchens explores motherhood, food and the uncanny.
She can be found on Instagram: @jennymunrohunt
KAREN PIERCE GONZALEZ
Down River with Li Po is Karen Pierce Gonzalez’s third chapbook. Prior chapbooks include True North (Origami Poems Project), and Coyote in the basket of my ribs (Alabaster Leaves). Her fiction, non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications (Honeyguide Literary Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Worn Journal, etc.) and when not writing or facilitating writing workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area, she creates 3D assemblage art from natural and found materials.
Down River with Li Po is a collection of 27 eco-poems inspired by the river travels of classic Tang Dynasty poet Li Po. Follow her on X, Facebook, and Instagram.
LAURA LEWIS-WATERS
Laura Lewis-Waters is a mum, poet, teacher and PhD candidate from the Midlands. Her debut collection Bathroom Prisoners was published in May 2022 by Bent Key Publishing and is a vulnerable account of her experience with OCD while pregnant. Her second collection Beneath the Light will be published by Querencia Press and continues her mental health journey with a new baby after birth trauma. She also writes about climate change, particularly sea level rise, and her poems have recently been featured on the BBC Upload Festival as well as in Public Sector Poetry Journal, Free Verse Revolution Lit Magazine and Streetcake Magazine.
Her upcoming pamphlet Where Sea Meets Sea explores the changing East Anglia coast through confessional and imagined writing. Some of the poems include verbatim to raise awareness of peoples' experience of sea level rise.
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Instagram: @lauralewis_waters
VANESSA NAPOLITANO
Vanessa lives in Yorkshire with her husband and daughter. She has a MA in Poetry from Manchester Metropolitan University and has been writing poetry for as long as she can remember! Her recent publications can be found in the girl/summer folio at Mom Egg Review, Hope is a Group Project anthology, and in the Rhubarb anthology, a book organised by local poets. She loves to write about nature, motherhood, and travel.
Her collection Various Magics is informed by the natural and domestic world, the poems explore connection, emotion, and moments of meaning - small details, and big feelings.
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Vanessa can be found at @nessanapswrites on Instagram.
CHRISTOPHER MARTIN
Christopher Martin is a poet and Buddhist living by the mouth of the Tyne on the north east coast of England. His work has featured in various publications, anthologies and events such as Sam Lee and the Nest Collectives 'Singing with Nightingales'.
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In The Likeness Of The Upper Air, his upcoming debut collection, is centred around a spiritual journey through suicide related trauma and grief to healing with the sacred world as mirror and guide. It looks at the mystery of time and memory, suffering and self, family and love.
Instagram: @martintimations
BEX HAINSWORTH
Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and has been shortlisted in the Welsh Poetry Competition, Waltham Forest Poetry Competition, and the AUB International Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The Coachella Review, Atrium, Okay Donkey, bath magg, and trampset.
Her collection Walrussey is a collection of poetry which explores marine ecosystems and their inhabitants, from a Greenland shark lurking in the depths of Arctic waters to the tide pools of the Welsh coast. It is an ode to the beauty of these aquatic worlds, but also a warning about the devastating impacts of climate change.
X: @PoetBex
CORINNA BOARD
Corinna Board teaches English as an additional language in Oxford. She grew up on her grandparents’ farm and is particularly inspired by nature and the rural environment. Her work is published in Green Ink, Black Cat Poetry Press, Anthropocene, Spelt and elsewhere.
Her collection Arboreal (of or living in trees) explores the relationships between human and nature, real and imaginary, how a walk in the woods can become a journey of self-discovery.
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Instagram: @parole_de_reveuse
REBECCA RAE
Rebecca Rae is a poetess living in Devon, where the natural landscape she loves to explore informs and inspires her work, weaving together dreams, healing and the Female Gothic. Published by Hecate Magazine and the Oxford Centre for Life Writing, she has also been twice shortlisted for the Royal Court Writers Group and features in both anthologies of Quay Voices published by Literature Works.
Her upcoming debut poetry collection, A Book Is A Bird That Sings In The Evening combines themes of nature, shadow work, self-reflection and myth to invite readers on a journey through dark dreams and labyrinths, seeking redemption, healing and hope.
Instagram: @rhraewrites
X: @rhrae
GALIA ADMONI
Galia Admoni is a writer, musician and Head of English at a school in London. She has poems in Bad Lilies, The North, The Rialto and others. She is the author of 'i get lost everywhere, you know this now' (Salo Press, 2024). Follow her on X @galiamelon
The often world-weary speaker in the central cycle of her upcoming collection Immediately after and then later, confronts the experiences, breakdowns and aftermaths of their relationships. They speak of surviving and of not surviving. This pamphlet is a collection of small windows into a life of someone who can’t help but fall in love, no matter how many times they get hurt.
BENEDICTA NORELL
Benedicta lives in Oxford. After her MA in Creative Writing at Brookes University, she worked as an editorial assistant before becoming a freelance editor of fiction and memoir. Her poetry explores themes relating to identity, self-worth, family and body politics. Journals in which her poems appear, or are upcoming, include Atrium Poetry, Dust Poetry Magazine, Worktown Words, The Nuthatch, Blue Press and Ink Sweat and Tears.
Terrible Mother, her debut pamphlet with Black Cat Poetry Press, arose out of a year bookended by coronavirus and memories of her mother’s stroke. The collection moves from childhood through new motherhood to midlife and charts a journey from self-loathing to something like its opposite.
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Benedicta writes with truth and beauty, her words are soft to the touch but burn bright, shining a light on the pain and complexities of love and family.
-Kit de Waal, bestselling author of My Name is Leon
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Instagram: @benedictanorell
X: @benedicta_be
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KRISTINA DIPROSE
Kristina Diprose co-runs the Rhubarb at the Triangle open mic in Shipley, and co-edited its anthologies Un/Forced and Seconds. She has been shortlisted in the Ginkgo Prize and Leeds Poetry Festival competitions and was an Ilkley Literature Festival 2023 New Northern Poet. Recent poems appear in publications from Strix, Open Shutter Press and The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press.
Thin Spells, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is forthcoming in 2025. Diamond dust falls hundreds of miles from the Arctic and a woman overwinters as a wood frog. Starlings learn the language of a two-stroke engine and a battery hen holds court in a friend’s living room. These are poems about human entanglement in nature, everyday wonders and where we seek solace.
Instagram: @kristinadiprose