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ACROSS BORDERS POETS

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Sonnet L’Abbé grew up in Calgary, rural southern Manitoba, and Kitchener-Waterloo. They are the author of A Strange Relief, Killarnoe, and Sonnet’s ShakespeareTheir styles range from lyric to concrete and experimental, and their themes include racial, national and settler identity, relationship to land, surviving sexual assault, plant knowledge, physiology of music and love. Their influences include M. NourbeSe PhillipAnne MichaelsChristian BökClaudia Rankine, Wislawa Szymborska and Seamus Heaney. They were the editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2014, and their chapbook, Anima Canadensis, won the 2017 bp Nichol Chapbook Award. L’Abbé now lives in Nanaimo BC and is a professor at Vancouver Island University.

Ellen Van Neerven (Australia)(they/them) is an award-winning author, editor and educator of Mununjali (Yugambeh language group) and Dutch heritage.  van Neerven’s poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020), the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award, is now available.

They are the editor of three anthologies, including the recent Homeland Calling: Words from a New Generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voices .

Roy McFarlane was born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage and has spent most of his years living in Wolverhampton. He has held the roles of Birmingham’s Poet Laureate,  Starbucks’ Poet in Residence, and the Birmingham & Midland Institute’s Poet in Residence. Roy’s writing has appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe, 2012), Filigree (Peepal Tree,  2018) and he is the editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack, 2011). His first full collection of poems, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was published in 2016, followed by The Healing Next Time in 2018, both published by Nine Arches Press. He is the current Canal Laureate.

Hinemoana Baker (New Zealand) is a poet, musician and creative writing teacher. She traces her ancestry from Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa and Ngāi Tahu, as well as from England and Germany (Oberammergau in Bayern). Her previous poetry collections are mātuhi | needle (co-published in 2004 by Victoria University Press and Perceval Press), kōiwi kōiwi (VUP, 2010) and waha | mouth (VUP, 2014). She has edited several online and print anthologies and released several albums of original music and more experimental sound art. She works in English, Māori and more recently German, the latter in collaboration with German poet and sound performer Ulrike Almut Sandig. She is currently living in Berlin, where she was 2016 Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer in Residence, and completing a PhD at Potsdam University.

Efe Paul Azino born in Lagos is a Nigerian writer, performance artist and poet, regarded “as one of Nigeria’s leading performance poets.” He has also been regarded as one who has “played a pivotal part in lifting the words from the page and giving them life” in the Nigerian spoken word performance space.

He is the founder and director of the Lagos International Poetry Festival, and the director of poetry at the annual Lagos Book and Art Festival.

In 2015, he published his first collection of poetry titled For Broken Men Who Cross Often, published by Farafina Books. His second poetry collection, The Tragedy of Falling with Laughter Stuck in Your Throat, came out in 2018.

Nafeesa Hamid is a British Pakistani poet, spoken word artist and playwright based in the Midlands. Her work focuses on issues such as mental health, domestic violence, gender, identity and culture. Nafeesa has worked with Apples and SnakesBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG)mac birminghamDerby Theatre and Beatfreeks. She is also the founder and co-manager of Twisted Tongues and Twisted Tongue Scribble Sessions. 

Her debut collection of poetry Besharam was published in 2018 and was highly commended at the Forward Prize in 2020. A poem from this collection also features in the recently published Forward Poems of the Decade 2011–2020.

Saradha Soobrayen is a creative activist working with poetry, visual arts and live arts.  Born in London of Mauritian parentage, she received a Society of Authors, Eric Gregory Award for Poetry in 2004 Ongoing projects include  ‘Sounds Like Root Shock’ a multidisciplinary poetic inquiry into the depopulation of the Chagos Archipelago. Her latest publication  ‘In Her Deepest Sleep, Madam Lisette Talate Returns to Chagos’ is published by Akashic Books – New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Boxset (Nane). In 2022 she was named in Electricliterature.com ’12 Mauritian women writers you should be reading.’ www.saradhasoobrayen.com

Njeri Wangari. Known more by her trademark ‘The Kenyan Poet’.  Njeri Wangari is arguably Africa’s pioneer poet blogger.  Her journey into poetry began in 2004 as a fledgling writer who was among an emerging breed of African poets riding the crest of a ‘new wave’ of keen interest among Kenyans in ‘spoken word’ performance born with the publication of Kwani! launched by the Binyavanga Wainaina.   She represents Africa’s first generation of contemporary poets and is one of Kenya’s first spoken word artists.

Njeri authored her first anthology, Her book Mines & Mind Fields in 2010.  The volume is an urban blues poetry collection whose 40 poems explore themes on Urban Blues, Love, Identity, Traditions, Cultural changes, Exploitation and Politics among others.

Melizerani T. Selva is a spoken word poet, storyteller and journalist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her rhymes are drawn from her wild curiosity in taboos and all the things her Mother told her not to do. Having been the first Malaysian to speak and perform poetry at Asia’s largest TEDx event, TEDxGateway (Mumbai), she has also gained first runner up at both The National Singapore Slam and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival slam.

Her poems have also seen the prominent stages of Lit Up SingaporeGeorgetown Literary FestivalUrbanscapes, Raising The Bar, Melaka International Arts Festival 2014, Cri de Femme International Poetry and Arts Festival 2015 and various literary events in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia and India. Her first book of poems titled ‘Taboo’ made the Top 10 Best-Seller List of Malaysia’s Largest Online Bookstore.

Dzifa Benson is a multi-disciplinary live artist who uses literature as her primary mode of expression. The intersections between science, art, the body and ritual and by the question of who or what is invisible animate Dzifa’s practice. She explores this through poetry, storytelling, theatre, performance, libretti, essay, journalism and a range of other media. She also embraces education, collaboration and participation at the heart of her practice. She is interested site-specific work as well as subverting the use of existing spaces.    

Born in London to Ghanaian parents, Dzifa grew up in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. She has performed her work internationally in many contexts.

ALSO FEATURING Tishani Doshi (India), Alvin Pang (Singapore), Isabelle Baafi (South Africa), Shivanee Ramlochan (Trinidad & Tobago), Nick Makoha (Uganda), Kayo Chingonye (Zambia).

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Nicki Heinen

“I have had extremely difficult experiences because of my bipolar illness. I write to transmute that experience and try to relay it so that it’s understandable, and to let readers in to a reality that is normally shut away from the world. Writing for me is an act of therapeutic power.”

Nicki Heinen was born in Germany but moved to Birmingham, U.K at the age of 6. She studied English at Girton College, Cambridge University, where she won the Barbara Wrigley Prize for Poetry. Her work has been published in a variety of print and on-line magazines and anthologies, including Magma and Bloodaxe’s Staying Human anthology. She was shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize in 2012, and commended in the Winchester Prize 2018. She founded and hosts Words & Jazz, a spoken word and music night, at the Vortex Jazz Café, London. She lives in North London.

There May Not Be A Reason Why

Nicki Heinen has been sectioned and hostpitalised under the mental health act on several occasions during her late teen and early adult years. As such, her debut collection contains vivid descriptions of hospitals and her incarceration in them.

She has also experienced long periods of freedom, often chaperoned as it is, by its evil twin brother, loneliness. At times, freedom can be an incarceration of its own.

It is no exaggeration to state that, in this astonishing debut full collection, Nicki is able to show that she has the imagination, the wit and the craft to be able to move almost nimbly beyond all these restrictions in her work, producing poetry of great power and invention. It is poetry of some power that can raise you up and out through the roof of the cage and into the air!

SAMPLE POEM

#MeToo

this skin dries bloodless, underneath a ghost scratches pale-blue                    feather in my mouth turns liquid like tide-pods exploding                                          the sun is absent, a carnation wilts on the grave, a shadow not falling                    no crater so deep as the hold in my mind, filled with all the things I said                  all the things you took, all the things undone                                                      furniture of the bipolar kingdom, stuffed full of dust-mites                              burrowed in like spun tops                                                                                                  is it not an exercise set for the next time?                                                                      no, it’s not                                                                                                                            it’s this moment in which I stand                                                                                        a woman enfettered                                                                                                      stand with feather in mouth                                                                                              my blood on your lips, your face etched in the winter air                                            my head splintering, a silent granade

'In a bracing debut that fully faces up to difficult experience without flinching, it is to Heinen's great credit that what also comes through, time and time again, in the ravenously actual: tactile and sensuous, stubbornly real- the 'piece-of-shit radiator, The King of Cats, spandex pants, Turkish coffee, Power Energy Sonia'. The hope being, of course, that one retrieves a measure of grace from the other. Like dancing in front of a Rothko.'
Matthew Caley
'Nicki Heinen’s poems deal with extremes of experience, but are composed with cool determination, loving patience and a Keatsian delight in the material and tangible world.’.
Sasha Dugdale

Itch

Nicki’s Debut Pamphlet Itch was launched with Eyewear Press in 2017 and was a London Review Bookshop book of the year.

‘Nicki Heinen’s debut collection is half a lifetime in the making. The voice rings clear throughout every circumstance. Refusing to be dehumanised by medicalisation and attacks on agency, it is exact about its locations and attentive to transformations […] this collection ultimately chooses to sing a love that is simple and animal, and of astronomical proportions.’ – Vahni Capildeo

More from Nicki

More Verve Poetry Press Authors
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Elle Dillon-Reams

Originally from Brighton, Elle has lived in London for the last 12 years. After dabbling in various poetry nights across the UK, she won the Genesis Slam in 2019 and is going ahead to the Hammer and Tongue National Finals at The Royal Albert Hall that was slated to take place last year. In 2019 she also performed as Boiler House London’s International Women’s Day Poet. After winning the Imperial College Nature Slam in 2020 with her piece FOR FREDDY, she was then the International Women’s Day poet for Imperial College London in their 2021 celebrations, running a bespoke workshop for doctors, mathematicians and scientists. 

Her debut play HoneyBEE, a spoken word solo show, received 5 star reviews, sold out at the Brighton fringe and VAULT Festival, and won both the Three Weeks Editor’s Award and Best Newcomer from The Scotsman in Edinburgh. She wrote and recorded an original piece of poetry for ‘Experimental Words’ collaborating with Scientist Sam Gallivan launching in June 2021,

and also recently recorded her second spoken word solo show MEAT, collaborating with musicians and sound designers Porscha Present and Emer Dineen. The audio recording will be released as part of Flugelman Productions’ 6-part podcast series of plays Make Me in Summer 2021.

Elle has had several pieces published by Dear Damsels, and was last year longlisted for the Pentabus Writer-in-Residence. She has been featured on Tyrone Lewis’ Spoken Word channel Process Productions and regularly records with MuddyFeet poetry. Her favourite poets producing the works most dog-eared and well loved on her bookshelf are Ocean Vuong, Polarbear, Cecilia Knapp, Caleb Femi, Kae Tempest, and Vanessa Kissule.

She facilitates poetry and performance, direct, and mentors at several establishments in London including charity and community theatre YATI (Young Actors Theatre Islington), East 15 Acting School, and for Mountview Drama school has been commissioned to write various new pieces of Spoken Word for Generation X, an outreach project designed to engage with groups of teenagers in the Peckham Community entitled My Generation.

Maladaptive is Elle’s first collection of Poetry.

MALADAPTIVE

Maladaptive is about identity, wintering, womanhood, love and home. Exploring the loss of self and homesickness for that which is no longer there, grief for those gone and the rebuilding of hope and finding the light in the dark.

Whilst being a hugely honest, personal and vulnerable collection, Maladaptive is accessible, relatable and comforting. A raw exploration of mental health with a necessary, playful dose of finding comedy in unexpected places, a mindfulness in the natural world drawing on Elle’s growing up by the seaside and feeling a strong drawing to the water. And sourcing the bonds that connect us all as much more than monoliths, that which make us feel we belong.

'"Elle has a powerful grasp of language, deploying words with an often startling force - though there is gentleness here, too. There's a visceral connection to experience, with the everyday nestling up against the political and passionate. Breathtaking .'
Dan Simpson

SAMPLE POEM

ZWICKY 18

Flecks of burning
Irregular
Searching for companion galaxy
Interacting triggers black holes of
Worry
Constellations of conversations on the cusp of
She cuts off her hair, declares ballet is not for this girl
Explosion of potential leaves trail behind
Mum watches through a far away telescope
She is the astronaut of imagination
Daydreams on thumbsucks
Tumble tucks into pools outside of school playgrounds
Pounding feet of older children
Year 6 supernovas who don’t know her but show her COOL
Her territory lies in pages of stories, thrust into selecting her
Best Friend
Little cheeks erupt in apology
Flecks burning red
Her mouth clusters of dust.

'Elle is a witch, the best kind of witch, casting spells that reach deep into the souls of her readers and audiences, and pull out kindness and hope. Elle’s poetry is tender and timeless, speaking from a place of raw honesty that is so beautiful it often seems like magic .' 
Kayla Martel Feldman

Elle Dillon-Reams takes to the Genesis Grand Final stage with a powerful poem that deals with the rise of sexual assault on the tube and why feminism is so essential in the battle against such abuse. Filmed December 2019.

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VERVE Poetry Press: 2021 to 2022!

At the end of a huge publishing year for VERVE and the beginning of yet another one, Verve Poetry Press Founder and Editor Stuart Bartholomew reflects on 2021 and what exciting things may be coming soon…

LOOKING BACK...

Well phew! What a year 2021 for VERVE Poetry Press. With no festival to distract us (don’t worry, we are back in Feb 22) it was a time to concentrate on our publishing side. While live events weren’t really an option most of the time, which harmed our ability to launch books properly, we did our best to run Zoom launches where possible (some incredible evenings were had on that most intimate of settings!) and even tried our hand at live streaming a multipoet event and chat!

In 2021, our publishing programme was part-funded by Arts Council England. This allowed us for the first time to employ help with our marketing – Kibriya Mehrban has done a stunning job blogging, producing wonderful monthly newsletters that read like magazines, and helping us to get our books out there when events haven’t been an option. She has made such a difference and will continue to do so this year too!

With our funding, we were able to have our biggest year of publishing yet! We had our second open submissions window for full collections only in March (over 400 manuscripts submitted 🤯) and produced a wonderful season of collections and pamphlets of every stamp.

A highlight among many has to be Rushika Wick’s glorious debut Afterlife As Trash which was highly commended at the Forwards, reviewed in Poetry Review and was featured in Poem of the Week in The Telegraph. But we are incredibly proud of all the books we published in 2021.

LOOKING FORWARD...

Now in early 2022 and on the eve of our first three publications of the year, we have another massive season of publishing ahead of us, before reining things in a bit in 2023. So many exciting books including debuts by Nicki Heinen, Qudsia Akhtar, Kathy Pimlott and Kayleigh Campbell – spoken word from Kat Lyons, Imogen Stirling and Elle Dillon-Reams, an unexpected fourth collection from Sarah James and pamphlets from Erica Gillingham, Betty Doyle and Peter deGraft Johnsonwhich are all up for pre-order.

We will open submissions once again, this time in May, and will be accepting finished full collection and pamphlet length manuscripts, to search for that handful of books that will make our 2023 season sing… we can’t wait to see what we are sent!

We have our sister festival returning, featuring many of our Press poets and many, many others. After that, we are partnering with the BBC on this year’s Birmingham-based Contains Strong Language Festival in September which will be epic!

We hope that 2022 will see us able to get our poets out and about to readings and launch events much more than last year, and even have plans for a bi-monthly bi-city monthly night with open mic! Keep your ears to the ground for all our news!

I feel that we are beginning to establish ourselves as a press to watch and a champion of variety and diversity as well as excellence in poetry. We are working hard to be an indie poetry press worthy of the name. We thank you for all your support!

Recent additions to our pantheon! Could you join them?

So there you have it! (Almost) everything you need to know about submitting to Verve Poetry Press in one place. If you or anyone you know is interested, be sure to follow us on socials for all the updates and get those manuscripts ready!

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Kat Lyons

‘I believe that telling stories is part of what makes us human. We tell stories to know ourselves, to share our experiences, and as a way of making and remaking our culture. Poetry exists in a continuum within that tradition alongside folksongs, punk cabaret, griots and bards, and everyone has the right to access it.’ 

Kat Lyons is a Queer Bristol-based writer, performer, workshop facilitator and creative producer whose work is grounded in everyday politics and a love of storytelling. They perform throughout the UK, were nominated for the 2022 Jerwood Poetry in Performance Award and their collaborative animated poetry film Duvet Days was selected as part of the official program at ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival 2021.

Kat is currently touring their debut solo show Dry Season, a spoken word theatre show exploring gender, age and menopause. Their debut poetry collection is forthcoming in Feb 2022 from Verve Poetry Press.

Kat is passionate about using the power of stories to re/connect people to themselves, each other and their environment.

LOVE BENEATH THE NAILS

Kat Lyons traces lines of grief, resilience and r/age with a storyteller’s sensibility and a lyrical touch. Exploring bereavement, familial relationships, ecological crisis, and Queer life and identity, Love Beneath the Nails scratches at layers of regret, reminiscence and self-delusion to reveal the beauty in the mundane.

By turns tender, visceral and fierce, these poems grip your hand and pull you into a world of acutely observed human frailties with surreal notes; where polar bears work the night shift, Grief eats toast on the sofa, and Shakespeare’s Beatrice defends her cannibalistic choices.

 'In writing that is cinematic and intimate Lyons balances deftly on the bridge between what is spoken and what finds life on the page. Experimental and innovative this debut collection adventures across a range of poetics including two heartbreaking sets of cantos circling grief and sexual terrorism. Beautiful.'
Joelle Taylor

SAMPLE POEM

When Eve Met Isaac

they talked about apples, and the mechanics of falling.  
examine the sheen on the ruddy skin, how it calls

your fingers, adjust your grip, they bruise easily.
their energy cannot be destroyed, but look 

what happens when they tumble
how they lie spread, smashed into the dirt.

deflect the force, slap the ground and roll.
she learnt that in her self-

defense class. ignore the hiss. how they suck  
their teeth at your body.

blame it on the hothouse weather.
walled gardens are always microclimates.

she packed her knowledge and left. he stayed
beneath the tree. the apples

cradled their maggots, swayed in the wind
waited for their chance.

'Kat is a brilliant and charismatic performer. Their control of movement and voice gives their work a physicality combined with a subtlety unusual in spoken word. Their writing is sharp, lyrical, well-observed and economical.'
Tom Sastry

DRY SEASON

Lyons’ debut spoken word show, Dry Season, is not only an unflinching examination of menopausal chaos, but also a sharp look at societal expectations of age and gender. 

Dry Season interweaves music, movement and medical texts with original poetry and animation. Using the role of women in fairytales as a starting point, Kat takes the audience on a journey through a chaotic year of hormone issues, NHS visits and unexpected connections.

'Kat's unapologetic words deliver eloquent punches, their poetry challenging audiences to look them straight in the eyes and meet them for who they are. Kat's performance is compelling and magnetic.'
Anita Kelly

Created as a collaboration between Kat and Edalia Day, Duvet Days is a short animated poetry film and part of Kat’s ‘Dry Season’.

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Imogen Stirling

‘Writing the beautiful, flawed characters of Love The Sinner was a comfort during the isolated times of the pandemic. Following their entangled lives reminded me of the joys of community and cities, with the collection ultimately being a celebration of all it means to be human.’

Imogen Stirling is a Glasgow-based artist. She is a performance poet, theatre-maker, musician, writer and facilitator. She was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence for Paisley Book Festival 2021, is currently leading on Wigtown Book Festival’s youth programme and features as a writer/performer on BAFTA-winning Sky Arts documentary, Life & Rhymes, hosted by Benjamin Zephaniah. Imogen is a highly regarded artist who has performed her work widely throughout the UK and abroad (inc. BBC, Latitude Festival, Lindisfarne Festival, Neu! Reekie!, Sofar Sounds). Imogen is best recognised for her five-star debut collection and show #Hypocrisy which sold out at Edinburgh and Prague Fringe Festivals (Speculative Books, 2019) and was a participant of the BBC Words First talent development scheme (BBC Radio 1Xtra, BBC Asian Network and BBC Contains Strong Language). 

She was awarded ‘Artist of the Year 2021’ (Scottish Emerging Theatre Awards/National Theatre of Scotland), is part of the Convergence 2022 screenwriting cohort and is co-founder of Siren Theatre Company (Tron Theatre, Ayr Gaiety). Imogen’s work has been described as ‘life-affirming artistry’ (Everything Theatre) and ‘a tonic for the tribal times we live in’ (Darren McGarvey). 

LOVE THE SINNER

This is a book adaptation of Imogen Stirling’s show-in-progress. A fusion of poetry, theatre and electronic music, Love The Sinner is a modern retelling of the stories of the seven deadly sins. Benjamin Zephaniah has called the show ‘the work of a lyrical genius’.

Swooping from the mundane to the immense, Stirling’s long-form poetry weaves narratives of human experience.

This story sees ancient roots clasp hands with modern compassion to explore human frailty, love and resilience, while the threat of ecological crisis rumbles in the background. 

'A rich and other worldly book, a compelling work woven with gold threads of resistance and resilience, connection and human nature.'
Salena Godden

SAMPLE POEM

Beginnings

Cast from the mind of a Greek,
they are seven.  
Etched in memory and manuscript, 
they act as guide,
warning
and legend. 
Crude definitions
caught somewhere between complex and simple, 
their cardinal intelligence documents
a testament of misdemeanour. 
Impressive, really  
See their history and stature,
standing as pinnacles, their vision held
t  e  r  r  i  f  i  c   v  a  s  t  n  e  s  s  

They span millennia
to tell us of sin.

'This collection demonstrates just how creative a thoughtful and intelligent poet can get with sin. I think this is the work of a lyrical genius. It is crafted by a great poet, and crafted with emotional depth. There's nothing like this. There's no one like Imogen.' 
Benjamin Zephaniah

#HYPOCRISY

This is a book adaptation of Imogen Stirling’s five-star show, with illustrations by Sean Mulvenna.
 
#Hypocrisy was originally performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018, before transferring to London’s Theatre503 and touring around the UK and Europe. An audio version of the show (featuring an original score) can be found on Spotify and Bandcamp.
'Exactly the sort of poetry we need right now.'
Alan Bissett

Rehearsal footage taken prior to Love The Sinner’s showcase at the Tron Theatre’s Outside Eyes event (October 2019).

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Sophie Sparham

“I gave up everything to write and perform. I gave up my career, my nine-to-five wage and worked three part-time jobs where I had less responsibility so I could have more time to write and trial workshops. I regret nothing!!!!! This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.”

Sophie Sparham is a writer from Derby. She has written commissions for BBC Radio 4, The V&A and The People’s History Museum. 

Sophie co-hosts the poetry night ‘Word Wise’ which won Best Spoken Word Night at the 2019 Saboteur Awards. Last year she became the first poet to perform at the metal festival Bloodstock Open Air.

THE MAN WHO ATE 50,000 WEETABIX

‘If I was asked to make a film of my life / I’d capture every unextraordinary moment.’

‘The Man Who ate 50,000 Weetabix’ is a collection which explores the tension between masculinity and freedom in a Derbyshire setting. The poems weave between pubs, fathers, music and the expectations that we put on ourselves.

The collection is a celebration of the mundane: the graffiti on toilets doors, bad take away names, fake ID, Wetherspoons carpets, local Star Trek Appreciation fan clubs and the phrase ‘ay’up’. How everyday rituals and occurrences are weird and magical.

SAMPLE POEM

Sunrise Over Aldi

It won’t always be like this, somewhere
boys will put down their postcodes and weep
into tracksuits, step over double yellow lines
and loiter with one another. On the south side
of the city a mother will embrace her daughter
for the first time, try on her new name and
find that it fits her lips. Caroline she will say,
Caroline, Caroline, you look beautiful. 
It won’t always be like this, somewhere
a seventy-year-old bird watcher will buy a motorbike
and find that he too can fly, a black woman
will show a mixed-race girl how to tie a headwrap
and something in her heart will leap. Somewhere,
someone will utter the words; I love you,
I miss you,
I’m sorry. 
An atheist will speak Allah and smile at the taste
of honey on his tongue, the dead will climb out of
their graves and shake those standing in line
at the bank. Somewhere, you will look down at the
stars shooting across the duel carriageway and
decide to climb off the iron railings. In the shadow
of the service station, you will wait for dawn.

'I don’t believe there’s anything ordinary, anything commonplace about Sophie. In fact, since reading her poetry, I’ve come to believe that - in the same way that there’s no such thing as bad weather, just unsuitable clothing - there’s no such thing as an ordinary moment, only ordinary ways of looking. Reader: you’re in for a treat'
Helen Mort

SAMPLE VIDEO

More from Sophie!

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Beth Calverley

I feel very strongly that poetry is for everyone. A lot of people think they can’t do poetry. What I say to that is, poetry is just listening to the world, thinking about the world, and writing it down from your own perspective”

Beth Calverley is a poet, creative coach and founder of The Poetry
Machine. Her poetry lives and breathes, holding your hand through crisp emotional landscapes.

Beth co-creates poems with people via her supportive practice, The Poetry Machine. She collaborates with places of work, learning, care and play, helping people to express what matters to them most.

One of Rife Magazine’s 2018 influential young people in Bristol, Beth was a Roundhouse Slam Finalist 2018 and a Bristol Life Awards Arts Finalist 2020. She is Poet in Residence at UH Bristol & Weston NHS Foundation Trust and was published in These Are The Hands, the NHS anthology endorsed by Stephen Fry and Michael Rosen.

Beth has performed at iconic venues such as Birmingham Hippodrome, Bristol Old Vic and London Roundhouse. She has worked with the BBC, Sky, Oh Magazine and The Prince’s Trust, among many other brilliant local and national organisations. Beth is also part of House of Figs, a music and poetry duo, and co-produces Milk Poetry, a nurturing platform for spoken word in Bristol.

BRAVE FACES & OTHER SMILES

‘…I told you / ‘I really like your smile’ / and, to my surprise / you gave it to me.’

Beth’s astonishing debut collection  takes the umbrella theme of the smile and shares it out – with great generosity and care – among a multiplicity of subjects, moods and meanings. Smiles can be brave, shy, sad, or a lighthouse beam of joy. They can be a mess of countless other things.

This subject seems so appropriate to a poet whose presence, way of reaching out to every member of her audience, and most of all her smile, seem to create smiles all around her. Her leaps of imagination take the breath away. Her use of recurring imagery draws a safety-net of light around her listeners and readers.

Some of the smiles that inspired poems in this collection are contributed by people whom Beth has met on her adventures with The Poetry Machine. These poems are worthy of your great attention. We dare you not to smile as you read.

SAMPLE POEM

Spellbound

Amidst the silver clouds and spectacles,
I met you:

lady with the loveliest smile I’ve ever seen.
History rippled your cheekbone map from lip to ear,

cauldrons so clear
I knew straight up
you were magic.

Silence slurped at your cup,
a tiny trick that gave you substance.

Spellbound, I edged closer.

Back then, I was invisible;
too shy to smile without looking for the pieces
of pushed luck in my soul’s reflection,
too shy to risk cracking my face in case it caved.

To me, your laughter lines were loud, sudden.
They drew me in.

The purr of your perfume,
the sheathed claw of your beauty
hinted at a life not read to girls at bedtime.

Your smile was the shock
of near-bad luck turned good.
A black cat walking the right way.
A magpie, joined in the end
by the flutter of a friend.

That’s when you looked straight at me,
like a glass of cold water.

I spilled my thoughts in awe –
appalled at my own daring,
I told you

I really like your smile

and, to my surprise,
you gave it to me.

'This is a rich, absorbing, heart-warming collection, sensitive to life's pleasures and pains. Beth Calverley makes us attend differently to ordinary things - a single look can be 'a glass of cold water', a room 'a tangle / of buttery light', a smile 'a too- / tight scrunchy'. We should all smile more, and we should all read more poetry. This collection covers all bases!''
Helen Mort

SAMPLE VIDEO

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Sharena Lee Satti

“I write because my heart burns with an

endless desire,

A slave to myself that fuels this wild flower,

Tamed only by spilling ink onto paper,

Releasing emotions that vanish like vapour,

POETRY is my one and only cure.”

Sharena Lee Satti is an Independent spoken word  artist, and Poet from Bradford, West Yorkshire

She is a very passionate poet who writes poetry about her own personal life, current environmental issues, social stigmas, homelessness, poverty and discrimination. She speaks openly about her past and the struggles she had to endure. She found her voice and encourages others to find theirs through poetry and self-expression.

She shares her love of spoken word through performance art. She is an influential, uplifting voice in Bradford, spreading her empathy and love of poetry in her local community. 

Sharena has been nominated for the British Indian awards, Media arts and culture and has recently being associated with Chelping, Red Bull amaphiko, Film and Photographer Tim Smith and Balbir Dance, Kala Sangam (The artist takeover) Bradford Festival, Bradford Literature Festival, and BBC radio, NHS, The south square arts centre, Mend, Bradford producing hub, Saltaire festival, Ilkley Lit festival, Bradford Libraries, Leeds Lieder, BBC Leeds, Drystone radio, Bcb Radio and BBC Radio 4.

She has facilitated spoken word events and has worked closely with schools delivering Poetry workshops.

SHE

The poems in She cover an already long career as an inspiring live poet, host and workshopper – it is obvious straight away that Sharena has produced a formidable body of work. Her collection features new work plus some selected poems from her earlier books.

Her poems are real, raw and honest, addressing issues such as survival, cultural-identity, life’s battles, self-love, bod dysmorphia and many other subjects that people struggle to speak about. Her love of nature is also evident. She writes with her emotions to the fore and her heart at the centre – and with a power that can leave you breathless.

SAMPLE POEM

What Is Love?

Its unlimited conversations and pauses of silence
It’s a language that speaks through every heartbeat
It’s a feeling, a sensual kind of healing
That penetrates the soul that has full control of you
And everything that you do, because when you love
You love without limitations or any navigation
Because love takes its own route
It rides through thunder storms and open seas
Tidal waves and a hurricane’s breeze
It’s like an open sky on a summer’s evening
When the sunset fades into the horizon
And you get that warm, fuzzy feeling
Love is an understanding, it’s being patient
It’s holding it together at the times you want to fall apart
When the beating of your heart pulses
When it palpitates, when life sometimes invalidates how you feel
Love carries you to a place that allows you to heal
Love is wireless, its eye communication
It’s an intuition, a spiritual vibration
It’s velvet red roses stemmed with pin-pricked thorns
It’s the early morning sun rays as a new day dawns
Love is eternal, its more than physical contact
It’s loving her soul more than her body in fact
Love is poetry and she is your muse
Your electrical fuse that ignites your heart
Love is a whirlwind of overactive heartbeats
Where eye contact meets
And you know this is the only place you want to be
Where she makes u feel wanted and loved and she shows you
you are worthy
This is Love.

'Sharena's Voice is bold and vital: both in its bravery and in its unflinching vulnerability. If ever you feel alone in the world, read her poems!'
Matt Abbott
Nymphs & Thugs
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Asma Elbadawi

“Many of my teachers predicted I would fail in life. This book is proof to me that I didn’t fail and a reminder that
we are all created in our unique ways, with our own paths and
interests and identities.”

Asma Elbadawi is a British Sudanese (born in Sudan and raised in England) Sports Inclusivity Consultant, Basketball Player and Spoken Word Poet. Elbadawi holds a BA Hons in Photography, Video and Digital Imaging and a Masters in Visual Arts. Her dual cultural heritage deeply influences her creativity with her main focus being female empowerment. She is best known for her involvement in the globally successful FIBA ALLOW HIJAB Campaign. This campaign saw the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) allow Muslim women to wear the Hijab in Professional Basketball and as the 2015 Words First Leeds winner which is a National poetry competition partnered by BBC Radio 1Xtra and the Roundhouse.

BELONGINGS

Belongings is, as it sounds, a collection of thoughts and feelings that depict the very heart of Asma Elbadawi’s life as a British Sudanese woman. A life that contains multiple influences, expectations and juxtapositions. Her poems are raw and unfiltered – Asma holds little back in her work, covering subjects personal to her such as migration, mental health, racism and sport. 

These lines that started out as spoken pieces have finally made it to the page, to be read and savoured. Asma presents you with that which is hers. Her Belongings. 

SAMPLE POEM

Words

Someone once told me
You should fear writers
They will dissect your wounds
And present you with them as words
Sentences
Sharp enough to pierce right through you
Let you question
At what point did you drop your armour long enough for them?
To read all your fears
Watch you grapple with your mind
Wonder if you’re strong enough to lay with your nightmares
And come out of the other end gasping for air
Use whatever remaining breaths you have left to drag your limbs to safe haven
Bathe in your dreams
And make them a reality
Or if you will choke

The same person once told me
That you should never trust a poet
They have the ability
To spin silk-smooth words that will leave you enchanted
Believing everything they tell you
Holding on to every thread
Drop your armour
Pied pipers, you will find yourself dancing to their sweet tunes
Follow them into whatever danger zone they planted
Fall deeply
For them to leave you hanging

No one stopped to ask how do writers and poets translate raw emotions so eloquently?
What whirl-wind of a storm must their life be in to feel so deeply?

Luckily someone once told me that there is power in your words
People will always fear people like you
Never lose your voice
Use it even if it’s shaking.

'Whether on film or in the flesh, Asma Elbadawi has an undeniable, almost electrical presence – it’s no wonder that she’s shot to fame over the past year as an outstanding performance poet.'
Verbal Remedy
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