Recusant Contributors
Alastair Aisgill, b 1940. After receiving a classical education, Aisgill entered the Royal Marines in which he served for ten years, travelling to many different parts of the world. This gave him a keen interest in other cultures and peoples. His subsequent career as a Civil Servant brought him into contact with men and women from all walks of life, particularly the unemployed. Much of his poetry is retrospective and melancholy as it deals with childhood, life's setbacks, and illness; however this is based on a fundamental belief in the resilience of the human spirit, and the hope for better things to come always pervades his work. Aisgill, who is now retired, is a keen genealogist who has traced his own major family lines back to the Tudor period. His other interests include military history; heraldry; and transcribing old documents. He has recently translated an 18th century French play into English.
R. A. Allen was born Memphis, Tennessee, USA in 1947. His fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in The Literary Review, The Barcelona Review, the New York Quarterly, PANK, Calliope, Boston Literary Magazine, Word Riot, Pirene's Fountain, and others. He lives in Memphis.
CB Anderson, born in 1949, traces his origin to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA. He was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. In the past five years his poems have appeared in numerous print and electronic journals in Great Britain and North America. His e-chapbook, A Walk in the Dark, is posted on the website of The New Formalist Press.
Amelia Arcamone-Makinano lives in Queens, NY, USA and teaches at Forest Hills High School. She was happily writing poems at
the University of Tampa, FL, when destiny jetted her to NYC. Her professional career began in a closet and a typewriter balanced
on her knees while writing sales manuals for a Broadway fashion company. She went on to journalism and covered crime for The New York Post, then horse shows for equestrian publications, like Horseman's Yankee Peddler. Amelia is now settled in the suburban part of Queens and is back to writing poems. She is published in The Poetry Warrior ezine and Ken * Again.
Leah Armstead was born in 1956. She has worked formerly as a poetry editor and poetry workshop facilitator in schools, nursing homes, and mental health drop-ins; an English teacher; medievalist and researcher into women's history; rape crisis counsellor; mental health project worker among other occupations. She has won prizes in both the US and UK and has had numerous poems and articles published in, among others: 13th Moon, Red Read, The Big Issue, Cyfarfod, Louisiana State Poetry Society Competition Journal, Community X-Press, Greenwave Magazine, Matriarchy Studies, Women and the Book (Oxford University Press), Pendulum, In Sync, Ragged Raven The Machineries of Love Anthology, Leaf Poems Anthology (2008), Earlyworks Web Competition (2007), Wells Literature Festival, commended (2006), Welsh Poetry Competition, commended (2007). She lives in Wales.
Keith Armstrong was born and bred in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has worked as a community development worker, poet, librarian & publisher. He has been a self-employed writer since 1986 and he has just received a doctorate, for his work on Newcastle writer Jack Common, from the University of Durham. He was Year of the Artist 2000 Poet-In-Residence at Hexham Races, working with painter Kathleen Sisterson. His poetry has been extensively published in magazines such as New Statesman, Poetry Review, Dream Catcher, Other Poetry, Aesthetica, Iron, Salzburg Poetry Review and Poetry Scotland, as well as in the collections The Jingling Geordie, Dreaming North, Pains of Class and Imagined Corners (Smokestack), on cassette, LP & CD, and on radio & TV. He has toured to Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Poland, Iceland (including readings with Peter Mortimer during the Cod War), Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Czech Republic, The Netherlands, Cuba, Jamaica and Kenya. His poetry has been translated into Dutch, German, Russian, Italian, Icelandic and Czech. His travels to Denmark, Germany, Holland and Sweden have also been supported by the British Council.
Sebastian Barker, b 1945, lives in London. Guarding the Border: Selected Poems (Enitharmon 1992), The Dream of Intelligence
(Littlewood Arc 1992, a long poem based on the life and works of Friedrich Nietzsche). Chairman of The Poetry Society between 1988-1992. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997. Elected editor of The London Magazine in 2002. Damnatio Memoriae: Erased from Memory (Enitharmon 2004), The Matter of Europe (Menard 2005), and The Erotics of God (Smokestack 2005). Sebastian Barker reading from his Poems (The Poetry Archive 2006).
Rudy Baron co-founded Downtown Brooklyn, the literary journal of the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University, in 1992, and served as editor until 1998. He served as an instructor of English at that campus for a number of years before pursuing a Law degree at Cardozo School of Law in New York City, which he completed in 2001. Since then he has decided he hates Law, has given
up on the legal world and has gone back to teaching, only this time at the public school level. He has been published in a number of journals and written two chapbooks, Shirts and Shaved Armpits and The Lingo of Beer. He has two beautiful daughters who he dotes on regularly.
Richard Barrett was born in Salford in 1976. He gained a BA in Politics and Contemporary History from University of Salford in 2002. He gained an MA in Modern British History from University of Manchester in 2006. Lacking the will and commitment to take his History studies any further he is about to commence another MA. He is preparing to undertake Scott Thurston's Innovation and Experiment Creative Writing MA at the University of Salford. Richard currently languishes in the Civil Service and writes in the evening and on weekends. His poetry has been published in The Delinquent, The Mental Virus, and The Ugly Tree. He has poems forthcoming in Parameter and in the chapbook Home, published by Time Travel Opportunists. His poetry has also appeared online at Great Works, Literary Spot ezine and Thieves Jargon. He has poems forthcoming in BlazeVox. He regularly takes part in poetry readings in the North West.
Barry Basden lives in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and two yellow Labradors. He writes mostly short pieces these days. Some have been published in various online venues. Some have not. He is co-author of CRACK! AND THUMP: WITH A COMBAT INFANTRY OFFICER IN WORLD WAR II and also edits the Camroc Press Review at www.camrocpressreview.com
Brian Beamish was born in Devon in 1974. He graduated in Theology from the College of St Mark and St John, nr Plymouth. He currently lives entombed in legion tomes with a pet theramin in Ealing, London, where he works for BT in order to keep himself in poetry and contemplation.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theatre director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theatre. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His poetry has been published in about as many journals
as the alphabet will permit, in the US, UK and elsewhere. His chapbook The Conquest of Somalia is forthcoming with Cervena Barva Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. He currently lives in New York City, where he writes fiction and his short stories, publishing in numerous literary magazines.
Jane Bellis was born in Wrexham, North Wales, on 8th July 1980. She has lived in Barcelona, Lisbon and Liverpool over the past ten years teaching English as a Foreign Language. More recently, she has worked as a Youth Guidance Officer with unemployed teens. She won a competition with Capsica Publishing in their Mersey Minis Series about Liverpool. They published a short piece Bellis wrote in a volume called Longing last year. So was also published in an underground independent fanzine called Slacker, based in Liverpool.
Sandy Benitez was born in Selma, Alabama, on 8 Oct 1970. Her poetry has appeared in over 85 print and online poetry journals such as Contemporary American Poets, Falling Star Magazine, The Clearfield Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Orange Room Review, Elimae, Lily, and Loch Raven Review. Benitez currently resides in Wyoming with her husband, 2 children, and 2 chocolate labs. Her first book of poetry, Ever Violet, by D-N Publishing is available by contacting the author at SandyB1070@msn.com.
Mike Berger is a retired PhD psychologist from Oregon. He worked as a therapist for 30 years. He freelanced during those years.
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal was born in 1967 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. He has lived in West Covina, California since 1975. He works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA. His chapbook, Still Human, was published in January 2009 by Kendra Steiner Editions.
Jan Bradley was born in the industrial Black Country of England on the side of a road due to her pure eagerness to live in the oxygenated world. She studied a fine art BSc followed by a postgraduate in specialist fine art printmaking and photography at the University of Brighton. Jan also studied environmental conservation, commercial horticulture, intensive crop production and environmental management skills…and sometime later, a postgraduate and MSc in Health Through Occupation. She now works as an Occupational Therapist at Mill View Psychiatric Hospital. Her MSc research paper, Exploring the Experiences of Writing Poetry, involved many writers from this site and others. She has been co-facilitating poetry and creative writing workshops with Alan Morrison within her work for Sussex Partnership NHS Trust over the last two years. She lives in Brighton.
Peter Branson is a creative writing tutor. Until recently he was Writer-in-residence for "All Write" run by Stoke-on-Trent Library Services. He began writing poetry seriously about five years ago and has had work published by many mainstream poetry journals, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Iota, 14, Fire, The Interpreter's House, Poetry Nottingham, Red Ink and Other Poetry.
In the last two years he has had success in several competitions including a first prize in The Envoi International, a second place in The Writing Magazine Open and a highly-commended in The Petra Kenney. His first collection, The Accidental Tourist, was published in May 2008.
Alan Britt was born on 3rd March 1950 in Norfolk, Virginia. His recent books are Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). The Poetry Library www.poetrymagazines.org.uk providing a free access digital library of 20th & 21st century English poetry magazines with the aim of preserving them for the future has included Britt’s work published in Fire (UK) in their project. Britt’s work also appears in the new anthology, Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets (Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru). Britt recently served as Panel Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry for the PCA/ACA Conference 2007 in Boston and read poetry at the WPA Gallery/Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River, NY (2008). In April 2009, he will deliver a presentation and poetry reading at Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ . Britt currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formerly feral cats.
Adrian Brown has had a distinguished career as a director of television programmes and theatre productions. He was at one time the youngest director ever taken on by the Drama Department of BBC Television, where he was responsible for many plays and serials, favourites being the stylish The Noble Spaniard of Somerset Maugham, with Margaret Rutherford and Kenneth Williams and, much later, The Belle Of Amherst, a study of poet Emily Dickinson with the ideally-cast Claire Bloom. This production won the International EMMY Award in New York, one of Brown’s seven awards for direction, which also include a BAFTA Nomination. Subsequently, as Producer/Director for Thames Arts, a leading television arts series in the 80s and 90s, he produced programmes
on the work of Ted Hughes, Adrian Mitchell, John Agard, Valerie Bloom, D. J. Enright, the dissident Czech poet Miroslav Holub and others, with the participation, at various times, of Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Julia Mackenzie, Imelda Staunton, Ron Moody, and many more, filming in the U.S., France, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Austria and Yugoslavia, in addition to the UK. Brown has directed twelve of Shakespeare’s plays in the theatre, as well as many other period and modern works. He has been a member of
the faculty for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the Webber-Douglas Academy, the Guildford School of Acting and the Birmingham School of Music. He has served on the council of the Directors’ Guild of Great Britain, of which he is now an emeritus member, and more recently as a Trustee of the Poetry Society. His poetry collections include Abominable Beasts, Guiding Principles, Conspicuous Display, Good Lord! (a quizzical reproach to an absent Almighty), Sahara, a magical nomadic trek, and Chac-Mool, an attack on globalisation which was a prizewinner at the Strokestown festival in Ireland. Sahara has been handsomely published by Hearing Eye Press, with other work appearing in magazines. An accomplished speaker, he has also performed work at the Poetry Society in Betterton Street, at the Arts Club in Dover Street, at the Battersea Arts Centre, the Torriano Meeting House, and the Poetry Shack, as well as readings in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Syria, Malta and Turkmenistan. His most recently published work,
The Ram In The Thicket, a much-praised epic in sensuous blank verse, was premiered last December in Delhi, as part of the Indian Literary Festival.
Leon Brown was born in Dorset in 1973. He has worked as an English Literature teacher and in TEFL at home and abroad including Greece and Portugal. He has been involved in poetry and theatre groups in Brighton and London both in an acting and writing capacity. Recently he has completed his first novel, Future Perfect, for which he is seeking a publisher. He is currently engaged
with writing his second, The Wrecker's Ball.
Christopher Capelluto was born on 22 February, 1989 in the suburbs of Long Island, New York, where he was also raised. After graduating from high school he moved to New York City to pursue his career in film making and story telling at the School of Visual Arts. After one year of SVA, Capelluto enlisted in the US army guard as an infantryman and has spent a year mobilized with the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team Bravo Company Infantry in Iraq.
Ken Champion is an internationally published poet and writer, has two poetry pamphlets, African Time and Cameo Poly and a collection, But Black & White Is Better (2008), all published by Tall Lighthouse. His fiction has been published in both the U.S. and U.K. and he hosts More Poetry at London’s Borough Market. He lectures in sociology and philosophy and lives in London.
Debjani Chatterjee is a survivor-poet, a cancer survivor and patron of Survivors' Poetry. The author of more than fifty books for children and adults, her most recent poetry collection is Words Spit and Splinter (Redbeck Press). She was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sheffield Hallam University in 2002 and received an MBE in 2008 for her services to Literature.
Abigail Clark was born 7th May 1983 in Camberwell, London. Freshly graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design. She has lived in Cornwall surfing the waves and in Rouen rooting through antique markets. Her work has appeared in Norfolk Journal, Norwich Evening News and Now or Never. She has work coming out soon online in Gloom Cupboard and Ink Sweat and Tears ezines. Currently she works at two manual jobs and presents a weekly radio show on Future Radio 96.9fm.
Richard J. N. Copeland has been writing intermittently for about thirty years. He has only recently, however, taken it up as a vocation, since which time he has had work published in a number of prestigious poetry publications, among them Awen, Black Mountain Review, Envoi, First time, and Quantum Leap, and has taken part in a range of public performances. He is a Poetry Society Stanza rep for North Herts and is currently working on a weighty Sci-Fi novel. He was recently commissioned by the BBC
and was filmed performing the commissioned work on BBC TV’s Look East. His collection, This Is Not A Sonnet, is forthcoming
from Survivors' Press (2008/09).
Alan Corkish is a writer from the UK. Originally from the Isle of Man he now lives in Liverpool where he writes novels, poetry and short stories, and co-edits the radical poetry journal erbacce. He is the author of Glimpses of Notes (2006), an autobiographical poem written in what the author calls "fragmented text"; Corrupted Memories, a poetry collection; and Groups (2006), a novel.
Rico Craig's Eviction is an extract from a novel-in-progress. He was born in the 70s and lives in Sydney, Australia. This is his first published piece.
Bernadette Cremin has previously worked as a social worker, tea lady, sociology lecturer, TEFL teacher, bank clerk and waitress. This chequered and eclectic career path has invaluably enriched her true vocation of poet and performer. Cremin has gone on to win a Year of the Artist award, an Arts Council performance poetry bursary, and has been published widely in the UK and Eire. As well as solo commissions, she has collaborated with a music producer (State Art), a film-maker (Indifference Productions), a photographer (Project Poetry) and a geneticist (Promise or Threat, ACE). Two collections: Perfect Mess (Biscuit Publishing, 2006) and Speechless (Waterloo, 2007), a poem from which was Highly Commended in the Forward Prize 2008. Her third collection, Miming Silence, is forthcoming from Waterloo in 2009.
Chris Crittenden was born in 1963 and lives in Maine. As a graduate student in Philosophy, he published several papers on topics in applied ethics, focusing on the dangers of the US military-capitalist mindset. Despite his successes and quickly earning a Ph.D., no one would hire him, so he moved to a remote area and began to write the most evocative, passionate poetry he could. He eventually published hundreds of poems, including work in Chelsea, Atlanta Review, Drunken Boat, The Iconoclast, DMQ Review, and Offcourse. His backyard is a forest and he enjoys the lack of a single traffic light within a fifty mile radius. He blogs mordantly
as Owl Who Laughs.
Jude Dillon is a poet in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is a photojournalist, winner of many awards. He has been published in several magazines mostly in England and the United States. He has three as yet unpublished collections of poetry. He is a contributing editor at Gloom Cupboard an e-zine based in Europe. www.judedillonwrites.blogspot.com
Rani Drew is a poet and short fiction writer. She has published in North American, UK and Indian poetry and fiction magazines. She is also a playwright. She has written stage and radio plays, and produced them in the U.K, China, Hungary, Spain and Macedonia.
Peter Dudink was born in the Netherlands. He is about to publish The Mad Knight of Love and War, a book for young adults with POD Infinity Publishing. His work has appeared in Retort Magazine (Australia). In 2002 he published a selection from his MA thesis in the summer issue of New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship (Harry Potter Anti-Hero: From Mis-Education to Conflict Mismanagement). Dudink lives in Ontario, Canada. This is his first published poem. www.deweydink.wordpress.com
Alan Dunnett was born in London in 1953. He read English at Oxford before going to drama school. After some years as a freelance theatre director, he became Acting Tutor at Central School of Speech & Drama and then Head of Postgraduate Studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama. He is now Course Director, MA Screen, Drama Centre London, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. His poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, Stand, Orbis, The Rialto, The Interpreter's House, Other Poetry, Outposts, Weyfarers, Poetry Nottingham, Pennine Platform, Dream Catcher, The Reader, Poetry News, New Poetry 6 (edited by Ted Hughes), The Methuen Book of Theatre Verse; also, a collection, Hurt Under Your Arm, published by Envoi, and a pamphlet, In the Savage Gap. In 1989, he received an East Midlands Arts Writer's Bursary and was then part of EMA's 1990 New Voices Tour. Several competition short-listings, prize-winning at Torbay (2008), Middlesex (2004), Stroud and Kent & Sussex among others. Readings at Nottingham, Derby and Bradford Playhouses, Leicester Haymarket, The Troubadour, The Poetry Cafe and on Radio Nottingham and Radio Derby.
Catrin Edwards Jones was born in Caerphilly, Glamorgan on 19 August 1928. in studied Portraiture at the Brighton College of Art and later furthered her training there in Textile Art. Before opening a Cornish Studio in St Ives she founded the Sussex Quilters on whom a television programme was made to explain their unique methods. At this time Edwards Jones was also teaching Textile Art
at Truro College and the St. Ives School of Painting. She went on to set up another quilting group, the St. Ives Quilters - prior to returning to Brighton in the 90s in order to be near her family. Since her return to Brighton her art has become very diverse - sculptured portraits in terracotta and various interpretations of the Sussex coast including Brighton Marina - in oils, watercolours, textile art and stained glass. Most recently she has been producing hand-painted lampshades for which she also also takes commissions. Her work has been seen and commissioned at the Chelsea Craft Fair, Liberty & Co and Harvey Nichols with exhibitions at London's Foyles and in the USA. Her website is at www.catrinstudio.co.uk
EGJ was born just outside Malmö, Sweden on 11 November 1981. She writes somewhere in between poetry and prose. Currently
a full-time MLitt student in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, EGJ also has a Master of Letters in The Gothic Imagination from the University of Stirling. Texts have appeared in Ponton, Serum, Bard, The Turnip and From Glasgow to Saturn. She lives, now and then, around Stirlingshire, Scotland.
Justin Ehrlich was born in Essex in 1985. He holds Honours in Philosophy but soon discovered that he enjoyed the style of Nietzsche’s writing more than the subject itself. Employment has been checkered, he is working as a volunteer literacy teacher to substance misusers until the Government force him to give it up for the sake of something more useful, like selling office equipment. A keen admirer of the Symbolist movement and its ramifications, he writes poetry and short fiction with similar principles in mind.
Neil Ellman was born in 1942, Brooklyn, New York. He is a retired educator who now finds time, and as well as inspiration, to devote to his passion for writing poetry. He is a devout liberal, iconoclast, and sentimentalist who lives with his wife, Gail, of many years, in Livingston, New Jersey.
Caroline England has had some writing published in Transmission, Parameter, Pipeline, Chimera, Lamport Court, Peace and Freedom Press, nr1, Succour, Pen Pusher, Positive Words, Twisted Tongue, The Text, White Chimney and The Ugly Tree.
Chris Firth was born in a back-to-back, Girlington, Bradford, 1962, one of seven kids. Grew up in Bradford - a delinquent, gang-member teenager until discovered White Cloud King Fu at 15, which set him on the better path. English Degree via Sheffield Poly where Barry Hines was his creative writing tutor. Fiction publications include Miasma and Unexpected Pond (Route 1998, 2000), Electraglade Tales (Skrev Press 2003) Branwell Bronte's Barber's Tale - (East Coast Books, 2005). For the last few years Firth worked soley on poetry, working with Shutter Books, producing poetry to accompany photographs in a three book series Whitby One Nine Nine, North Yorkshire One Nine Nine (Yorkshire Book of the Year 2007) and Teesway One Nine Nine. Currently working on a book of more personal and spiritual poetry, Sama Song from which these poems are taken. Some of the Sama Song poems were shortlisted in the 2008 UK Muslim Writers' Awards. Also playing double bass in the Arabic/Egyptian folk band Salam-UK Band while living with Deborah and son Jacob, and teaching English, in Whitby, North Yorkshire, UK. Websites: www.electraglade.com; www.salamukband.co.uk
James Fountain was born in Hartlepool in 1979 and is currently a lecturer in English Literature at Peterborough Regional College, and recently submitted the first PhD on neglected Scottish modernist poet Joseph Macleod to the University of Glasgow. He has published articles in various literary journals, as well as The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement (forthcoming). He is author of the autobiographical novel Out of Time (2006) and has had poems accepted for publication in various magazines.
Naomi Foyle is a Brighton-based poet and performer. Her poetry has been published widely in journals including Ambit, The London Magazine, PN Review, Poetry London, Tears in the Fence among others. Solo publications: Red Hot & Bothered
(Lansdowne Press, 2003), Canada (Echo Room Press, 2005), Febrifugue (Treeplantsink Press, 1996), and a libretto,
Hush: An Opera In Two Bestial Acts (Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto, 1990). Her first full volume, The Night Pavilion, was a PBS Recommendation in 2008.
David Francis is a singer-songwriter based in New York. In 2007 David released Poems, a CD of poems with music. This year
he published verse in Pennine Platform and Lucid Rhythms, and an article on the difference between song lyrics and poems in BigCityLit. David will be on tour in England this September 2008. A new CD Anthem for Green England by David Francis & the
Global Village (http://www.CDBaby.com/all/davidfrancis) is just released to protest against 910 acres of greenfields in West
Sussex being destroyed to build an "eco-town." The story is at http://www.monochromemuseum.co.uk
Simon Freedman was born in 1978 in Malta. He moved to the UK to study for a BA in Philosophy and has lived here ever since. Poetic influences are various and eclectic, however key ones include Elaine Feinstein, WH Auden, Philip Larkin and Stephen Spender. His poetry has previously been published in The Beat. Website: www.myspace.com/simonfreedman.
Alex Galper was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1971. He has been writing poems and short stories since he could remember. Immigrating to America at the age of 19 did not change it; to the contrary, majoring in Creative Writing at Brooklyn College and being mostly influenced by American poets created a fusion of Russian pessimism, Jewish humor and Western literary traditions and philosophy. Translations of his poems appeared in over 30 magazines in the USA and the UK. In his homeland, he is considered a cult underground poet whereas mainstream Russian literary magazines ignore him for lack of respect for rhymes, heavy erotic imagery, and being "too American".
Michael George Gibson was born and raised in Sussex. He was brought up both in a Sussex country parish and The Community of Saint Hilda, founded by his father in South London in the 1930s. His secondary education was at the Durham School, where he was a King’s Scholar. He took a General Batchelor of Arts Degree of the London University in English Literature, Psychology and Aesthetics. After a few years teaching in Colleges of Further Education - mainly in Wormwood Scrubs Prison - he became a gardener and landscape gardener. His particular interest and speciality is in the rhythmical nature of English poetry. Website: www.michaelgeorgegibson.org
Joseph Goosey was born on 23rd September 1986 in Cincinnati, USA. He has one chapbook available through Poptritus Press entitled A Comfortable Place With Regular Sunshine and one forthcoming through Shadow Archer Press entitled Wet And Dripping. Other poems of his can be seen in Thieves Jargon, Exquisite Corpse and SLAB.
Paul A Green’s radio plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, CBC Canada, RTE Ireland and Resonance FM. His play Babalon, about Crowleyite rocket scientist Jack Parsons was performed by Travesty Theatre; and his novel The Qliphoth was published by Libros while short audio pieces and articles on Burroughs, Sinclair and others can be found on-line, notably at www.culturecourt.com. Shadowing The City forms part of a short story sequence Radial City. A related story Radial Citizens
was recently published in Issue 5 of Brand Magazine,. These texts are part of the Radial City multi-media project being developed in collaboration with digital artist Jeremy Welsh and the Bureau of Unstable Urbanism. A Beginner’s Guide To Radial City, a video compilation of shorter texts and graphics, is in preparation and will be screened at the Hay Poetry Jam in June 2010. Green lives in Hereford.
Ben Hall was born in Kingston-upon-Thames in 1972 but spent much of his childhood in Hong Kong, where his architect father designed vast public housing projects and his mother worked as a nurse in a transit camp for Vietnamese refugees. After returning to England he studied Archaeology at the University of York in the same class as James Morrison (see below). This left him without
a single marketable skill and almost unemployable for the next ten years. In this period he wrote desultory articles for Bristol's Venue magazine, one of which was printed. He has since followed in his mother's footsteps and retrained as a nurse. He currently works in an intensive care unit in West Sussex. Website: http://benicek.livejournal.com
Carole Hamilton was born in Motherwell, lives and works in central Scotland. She teaches drama part time and in the remainder
of the week she writes mainly stories about her observations. Her work features in various anthologies and journals. In 2005 she graduated from Glasgow University's Masters in Creative Writing, and was awarded a New Writers Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council to write a series of stories about marginalised women. 'Budding', her prizewinning entry in the Scotsman Orange Short Story Award, appeared in the collection entitled Work (Polygon, 2006); 'The Hardest Winter' was winner of the Dunbartonshire novella competition 2007 - both are set on a Scottish cattle farm. 'Dissy', 'No Excuse', and 'Let Me Take You Down' are published in the anthologies Stramash (University of Glasgow, 2004) and Snacks After Swimming (Freight, 2006).
Graham Hardie poetry has been published in Markings, The New Writer (twice), Weyfarers, The David Jones Journal, Cutting Teeth, Nomad, The Coffee House, Cake and online at Nth Position. His first collection was published in 2007 by Ettrick Forest Press (www.efpress.com). Hardie is the editor of the online journals Osprey (www.ospreyjournal.co.uk) and The Glasgow Review (www.glasgowreview.co.uk), The Caledonia Review (www.caledoniareview.com), Eleutheria - Scottish Poetry Review, and is a founder of Literature Scotland (www.literaturescotland.com).
Mia Hart-Allison is from Middlesbrough but now lives in London. Her collection of poetry and fiction, Sacred Blue, was published in 2008 by Visionary Tongue Press, for whom she also reviews. Formerly, she was a reviewer for Poetry Express (Survivors' Poetry) under Alan Morrison's editorship. She has published poetry, prose and illustrations in various small press magazines and webzines.
Marc Harris was born in 1962 in Cardiff. He spent thirty years living in England, but returned to Cardiff in 2000. He has had poems published in many literary magazines including Agenda, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The New Welsh Review and Envoi, Confrontation, (New York). He recently read his poem 'Tony Blair's Schooldays', at The Wales Millenium Centre In Cardiff. He works with homeless people in the city of his birth.
Jan Harris was born in 1956 in Farnsfield, a small village in Nottinghamshire. She works from home as an editor for an online media company, and is also an editor for Flash Me Magazine. Her publishing credits for 2008 include a flash piece for Mslexia, and a short story to be published in Byker Books' forthcoming Radgepacket anthology.
Clare Hill was born in the West Midlands on 29th August 1978. She has written articles for Arts Disability Culture Magazine, Twisted Tongue, Multicultural and various websites and has written short stories for The Second BHF Book of Horror Stories, Twisted Tongue, Gold Dust, Writelink resources, and others. She has had poetry published in Raw Edge, Twisted Tongue, Delivered and Trespass. Two mental health books, both published by Chipmunka Publishing – including Living Without Marbles. Hill participated
in the Equal 2 New Writers' Development Programme in Birmingham, and has performed poetry at the Oasis Cafe Theatre, Borders bookshop, the Library Theatre, and in the middle of Birmingham town centre.
Antony Hitchin is a sometimes heretical purveyor of poetry and prose. Poetry is one of his more respectable vices and he has been published in numerous small press and independent journals including 3AM, Zygote in my Coffee, Underground Voices, Ditch and Guild of Outsider Writers. He is interested in violating both poetic and social conventional 'norms' and is currently working on chapbooks of cut-up poetry and his first full-length poetry collection. Antony is particularly passionate about trying to transcend dualities and binaries in his work. You can catch newly updated experiments at: www.myspace.com/antonyhitchin and http://antonyhitchin.blogspot.com/
Nigel Holt was born in 1964 in Wolverhampton. He is a British expatriate poet who has lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates for the past twelve years. He has been published in a number of online and print venues, the most recent being Snakeskin
and The Raintown Review. He is the co-editor with the Australian poet, Paul Stevens, of The Shit Creek Review. He also writes far more villanelles than is healthy.
John Horder has been publishing poetry and journalism since the early Sixties, his most famous collection, A Sense of Being (the celebrated title poem from which has been read by Julian Glover on BBC 2 and published in the prestigious Poem for the Day Two anthology, ed. Andrew Motion), was published by Chatto & Windus/Hogarth Press in 1969. John has also contributed many articles, reviews and obituaries to the Guardian throughout the years. A lifelong friend of Stevie Smith, he edited Greville Press’s pamphlet Stevie for the 2002 Survivors’ Poetry Stevie Smith event. His Collected Poems are forthcoming in 2009. Topical website: www.johnhorder.blogspot.com
Martin Jack has been published by Sentinel Poetry and in First Time, Great Works, Penumbra, Breakfast All Day, Poetry Monthly, by the Knoxville Guild of Writers in their Anthology of Journeys, and by Waterloo Press in Eratica as well as in an introductory sampler of his work in 2004: Waterloo Samplers No. 5.
Kathryn Jacobs is a medievalist-turned-poet with a chapbook called Advice Column out at Finishing Line Press (2008). She is a professor at Texas A & M – C. She has published over a hundred poems in the last three years, in journals such as The Formalist, Measure, Acumen, Decanto, Mezzo Cammin, Washington Literary Journal, 14 by 14, Barefoot Muse, Slant, Poetry Midwest, Wordgathering, etc. Until 2005 she wrote poetry sporadically, in between “proper” activities like scholarship. In November of that year, however, she lost her son Raymond who was only eighteen. That converted her: 'poetry makes life meaningful'.
Tom Jayston was born on 24th October 1971 in Chertsey. He grew up in Horsell and then Leigh. He’s been writing since he realised
he was able to. His influences include Kay Sneddon, Steve Fisher, Anne Rouse, Adrienne Rich, Charles Simic and too many others.
Some of his poems have previously appeared in the Creative Future anthology amazement. His first collection, Reverdie and Rude Awakenings, has just been published by Creative Future www.creativefuture.org.uk
Spencer Jeffery was born in New Zealand in 1976. He lived in Brighton, UK, for several years, during which time he wrote and recorded songs with a local band. He has been writing poems and songs since his early twenties. His first poetry/lyric collection,
Lost Lyrics of the Lowlands, was published in 2006. The poem published here originally appeared in Poetry Express magazine.
Simon Jenner was born in Cuckfield in 1959. Educated at Leeds, then Cambridge. A winner of a South-East Arts Bursary, and a recipient of two major Royal Literary Fund grants, he has also received a commission from BBC Southern Counties Radio. Jenner writes for Poetry Review, PNR, Tears in the Fence, The Tablet, Music on the Web and British Music Society. The first volume of his Selected Poems, About Bloody Time, was recently published by Waterloo Press. Since 2003 he has been the Director of Survivors’ Poetry. Jenner is also editor of the respected journal Eratica. He is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow for Chichester University. A collection of poems inspired by the life and work of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa is forthcoming from Perdika Press (2009).
Denis Joe was born in Cork, Eire on 6th January 1958. He has been published in a few journals over the years but most recently
in Content, a journal of creative writing based at The Spider Project in Liverpool; also in 10X3Plus, an American poetry journal.
He also has four poems in the up-and-coming North End Writers Group journal which is out in January. He edits the alcohol/drug addiction recovery magazine in Liverpool, Recovery Rising. Joe is active on the poetry scene in Liverpool and is a member of the North Liverpool Writers Group, which is facilitated by the great Pauline Rowe (who has also been featured in the Recusant).
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His brand new poetry chapbook with pictures, From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom are now available. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom is still available. He has been published in over 22 countries. Email: promomanusa@gmail.com. The author is also editor/publisher of four poetry sites, all open for submission via his website Poetry Man. All of his books are now available on Amazon.com.
Nicky Jones was born in Oxford , England on 6.1.1947. She taught in Secondary Education for ten years before leaving the profession to bring up her two children. She trained as an Integrative Counsellor in 1997, and worked in Primary Care until
recently. Her poetry has been published in a variety of magazines and in the poetry anthology The New Poetry. Nicky Jones
My Life In Poems, her ground breaking autobiography has recently been published by Copeland Books: http://www.copelandbooks.co.uk. She lives in North Wales.
Norman Jope was born in Plymouth, where he lives again after lengthy spells in other locations (most recently Swindon, Bristol
and Budapest) and works, as an administrator, at University College Plymouth St Mark & St John. His collection For The Wedding-Guest was published by Stride, and his poetry has appeared in many magazines, webzines and anthologies. A book-length sequence, The Book of Bells and Candles, was published by Waterloo Press in 2009 and translation of work into Romanian is underway. His critical work has appeared in various magazines and webzines, including Tears in the Fence, Poetry Salzburg Review and Terrible Work, and he is currently co-editing The Salt Critical Companion to Richard Berengarten (Burns); he has also edited the literary/cultural magazine Memes and co-edited, with Ian Robinson, the anthology In the Presence of Sharks: New
Poetry from Plymouth (Phlebas).
Dina Kafiris was born in 1969, and lives in Athens. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Essence, Horizon Review, Odyssey,
Fire, The Wide Skirt, City Circles, 1987 Anthology of Australian Poetry and others. She is currently completing a PhD in Creative
and Critical Writing at the University of Wales, Bangor.
Peycho Kanev is 28 years old. His work has been published in Welter, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Cemetery, Nerve Cowboy,
The Chiron Review, The Guild of Outsider Writers, Mad Swirl, Side of Grits, Southern Ocean Review, The Houston Literary Review and many others. He is nominated for a Pushcart Award. He lives in Chicago. His new collaborative collection r, containing poetry by himself and Felino Soriano, as well as photography from Duane Locke and Edward Wells II, is now available at Amazon.
Laura Kayne was born in London on 5th August 1978. Laura has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of
Sussex. She writes both poetry and prose and is currently (slowly!) working on a novel. Her poems have been published in The New Writer and Aesthetica magazine as well as online at Mosaic Minds and The Poetry Kit website.
Rose Kelleher (b. 1964) grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Maryland with her husband. Rose has worked as a technical writer and programmer, among other things, and authored four computer books. Since rediscovering poetry in recent years, she has published poems in The Raintown Review, Snakeskin, Umbrella, and other online and print magazines. Her first book of poems, Bundle o' Tinder, won the 2007 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and is available from Waywiser Press (www.waywiser-press.com).
Tom Kelly was born in Jarrow on Tyneside and now lives further up the Tyne at Blaydon and works as a drama lecturer at South Tyneside College. He has written a number of plays and musicals for The Customs House, South Shields, most recently I Left My Heart in Roker Park. His poetry and short stories have appeared on Radio Four and in many UK magazines including Stand, The Wide Skirt, The Red Lamp, The Penniless Press, and in a number of pamphlets. His volume The Wrong Jarrow was recently published by Smokestack.
Calum Kerr is 35 and was born in Lytham St Annes. He is a freelance writer, reviewer and teacher who lives in Cheadle near Stockport. He has been writing since the age of twelve. He used to be editor of Writer's Muse magazine and has had a number of stories, articles, reviews and essays published in a variety of places including PN Review, Transmission and Blank Pages. At the moment he is working on a novel and a play.
David Kessel was born in Harlesden, London, in April 1947. He suffered a breakdown at 17 prior to medical school. With diplomas from the RCSP, he went on to practise as a GP in East London until his second breakdown put a halt to his medical career. In spite
of his illness, David continued writing poetry and published The Ivy in 1989 (Aldgate Press; reprinted 1994). His poems have appeared in the Phoenix Co-Operative, Poetry Express and the anthologies Where There's Smoke, Hackney Writers, Outsider Poems, Bricklight – Poems from the Labour Movement in East London (Pluto Press, 1980) and Under the Asylum Tree (Survivors’ Press, 1995); and have been put to music by the EMFEB Symphony Orchestra in Owen Bourne’s score Hackney Chambers. The publication of O the Windows of the Bookshop Must Be Broken – Collected Poems 1970–2006 (ed. Alan Morrison, Survivors’ Press, 2006) proved a bestseller. A selection from this volume was recently published in a bilingual German-English volume,
Außenseitergedichte (Verlag Edition AV, 2007).
Prakash Kona is a critically acclaimed Indian novelist, essayist, poet and theorist, born in 1967, who currently lives, works and writes in Hyderabad, India. He writes in English, and is the author of the following books to date: Nunc Stans (Creative Non-fiction: 2009, CROSSING CHAOS enigmatic ink, Ontario, Canada); Pearls of an Unstrung Necklace (Fiction: 2005, Fugue State Press, New York); and Streets that Smell of Dying Roses (Fiction: 2003, Fugue State Press, New York). He is currently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of English Literature, School of English Literary Studies, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.
Karl Koweski was born in Hammond, Indiana, in 1974 and lived near Chicago until the age of 22 when he moved to the mountains of northern Alabama. He's written poetry and prose for most of his adult life. His latest chapbook, Diminishing Returns, is available
David LaBounty was born in Elmhurst, Illinois on January 10, 1968. He has held jobs in the navy, and as a miner, a mechanic, a reporter and a salesman. He is the author of The Perfect Revolution, The Trinity and Affluenza. His poetry and prose has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Zygote in my Coffee, Thieves Jargon, Unlikely 2.0, The Foliate Oak, Night Train, The New Plains Review, Pank, Pemmican, Word Riot, Dogmatika, The Smoking Poet, Common-Line, Gloom Cupboard, Cherry Bleeds, why vandalism?, Wild Goose Poetry Review, The Foundling Review, The Ranfurly Review, Beat the Dust, Laura Hird, silenced press, Poetry Cemetery, The Tonopah Review, Big Toe Review, Lit-Up Magazine, Zapata, The Orange Room Review, Underground Voices, Heroin Love Songs, Vulcan, Strange Road, Opium Poetry, Gutter Eloquence, The Battered Suitcase, Apt, Offbeat Pulp, My Favorite Bullet, Clockwise Cat, Amarillo Bay, Asinine Poetry, Brink Magazine, The Panhandler, The Blotter, Best Poem, Blue Skies, Poor Mojo, Cause and Effect, The Beat, Dirty Napkin, Outsider Writers, The Houston Literary Review, Red Fez, remark, Miller's Pond, Origami Condom, Vibrant Gray, Ink Sweat and Tears, Inscribed, LitChaos, Indite Circle, Mastodon Dentist, Ghoti, Haggard and Halloo, Eskimo Pie, Four Volts, Flutter, Death Metal Poetry, Calliope Nerve and decomP. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife and two young sons.
Thomas Ország-Land (b. 1938) is a poet and award-winning foreign correspondent who writes from London and his native Budapest. He survived the Holocaust as a Jewish child hiding from both the Nazis and the Allied bombers. He took part in the 1956 Hungarian revolution against Soviet rule as a journalist on the staff of A Magyar Függetlenség. He later read philosophy at Acadia University in Nova Scotia and trained on United Press International in Montreal and The Times and The Financial Times of London. His poetry has been published by The London Magazine and The New York Times, his reviews and polemics by The Times Literary Supplement and Poetry Review. His books include eight collections of poetry in many editions, including English translations from the Hungarian of work by several little known, major Holocaust poets. His next book will be Christmas in Auschwitz: Holocaust Poetry Translated from the Hungarian of András Mezei (Smokestack, England, 2010). Contact: Thomland111@Hotmail.Com.
Roberta Lawson is twenty-five years old, English, and lives in Brighton. Her work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Eviscerator Heaven, Sein Und Werden, Ditch, the Poetry That Matters, and Zygote In My Coffee, amongst a few other places. She blogs at http://mermaids-singing.blogspot.com
Richard Layton was born on 7th October 1942. He is now retired. He has been writing since his twenties. Since last year he's written over 50 satirical poems - many of them prompted by the various political scandals. In 1984 he received a 'Highly commended' prize in the Maldon Poetry festival for a pantoum written on the theme of '1984'. In 2004 he had a rondeau published in Still Life (United Press). Layton has also had two articles published in the magazine, Socialist Standard. His favourite poets are Alexander Pope and Roger Woddis.
Quincy Lehr was born November 14, 1975, Oklahoma City. He is the associate editor of The Raintown Review, and his first book, Across the Grid of Streets, appeared in 2008. His work has appeared in numerous journals in the U.S., UK, Ireland, Australia, and the Czech Republic. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches History.
PA Levy was born in the black and white days of 1954 in East London but now residing amongst the hedge mumblers of rural Suffolk. He has been published in many magazines, both on line and in print, from A cappella Zoo to Zygote In My Coffee and all stations in-between. He is also a founding member of the Clueless Collective and can be found loitering on page corners and wearing hoodies at www.cluelesscollective.co.uk
Robert Lietz was born in Syracuse, New York, on 20 January 1946. Over 500 of my poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah. Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,), At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press), The Inheritance (Sandhills Press), and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems. He has completed several print and hypertext (hypermedia) collections of poems for publication, including Character in the Works: Twentieth-Century Lives, West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, Keeping Touch, and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer.
Fiona Linday was born in Nottingham in the early Sixties. She works in education. Through serving in church and working as a Teaching Assistant, at Pierrepont-Gamston Primary school, she’s had opportunities to tell stories. Whilst taking up the challenge of recording prose she’s studied online towards a Certificate in Creative Writing, at Lancaster University. Also, as a member of the Association of Christian Writers, she continues to be encouraged. This is her first published piece of prose which benefited from the help of a mentor, through an Arts Training grant. At present she’s attempting her first novel, a crossover piece of fiction. She lives in the Midlands.
Phil Lucas was born in Twickenham, West London, in 1970. He has been a stand up comedy poet, a freelance photographer, run primary school classes on poetry and written for advertising agencies. Lucas now writes full-time and is lucky enough to have seen
his work in a number of magazines and books. He was also winner of The Arrival Press London Poetry Competition in 1996. Lucas
has published a novel, Seaside Tales From Asper St. Jasper (YourPod Ltd., 2008) and two poetry collections, Poems from the Seashore (2006) and The Silence of the Suburbs (2008), both Palores Publications. Website: www.phillucas.com
Graeme McCann was born in Canada in 1983 but have lived in England for the past thirteen years. He has have been writing since the age of eight and has a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Derby, including a First for his short story portfolio. McCann has recently completed a novella, but has not yet settled on a title for it. He has previously had short stories published on Magpies, and Rose.
John McKeown was born in Liverpool in 1959. He graduated from John Moore’s University in 1987 with an Honours Degree in
English and History. He lived in Prague for several years as a teacher and freelance journalist before moving to Ireland in 2000, where he was a columnist for the Irish Examiner, and arts feature writer for the Irish Times. He was theatre critic for the Irish Daily Mail from 2006 to 2008 and is currently reviewing theatre for the Irish Independent and raising his daughter Julia. He lives and writes in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin. His poems have appeared in Orbis, The Eildon Tree, Dreamcatcher, Aerings, Earth Love, Envoi, Borderlines, The London Magazine, and Irish-based journals Cyphers, The Shop, and Southword. He was winner of the Start Chapbook Prize (Ireland) in 2004 for his cycle of poems Looking Toward Inis Oírr. A full volume, Sea of Leaves, has just been published by Waterloo Press.
Richie McCaffery's poems have appeared or are due to appear in Magma, Poetry Scotland, Envoi, Horizon Review, Northwords Now. He is also the recipient of an Edwin Morgan Poetry bursary, funded by the Scottish Arts Council.
Michael McAloran was Belfast born in 1976. His family moved to the south of Ireland due to 'The Troubles'. He has been writing for almost a decade, but has only recently begun to submit. His work has been published by Full Of Crow (U.S), Poetry Monthly International, (U.K), WritingRaw (U.S), The Gloom Cupboard (U.S), Lines Written W/A Razor (Canada), Counterexample Poetics (U.S), and is forthcoming with Origami Condom (U.S), Deep Tissue (U.S), Why Vandalism? (U.S), Clockwise Cat (U.S), and also at BlazeVOX (U.S) (Fall Edition 2009). His first published book of poetry, entitled In The Black Cadaver Light is available from Poetry Monthly Press. He also like to entertain himself with cigarettes, paint, and alcohol...
David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives on an island in the Stockholm archipelago with a woman, five selfish cats and a stupid dog. He has a BA in History from Oxford, and an unconnected MA in philosophy, much later, from Stockholm. Details of his available books, chapbooks, and over 850 poems in or forthcoming at 370 places online or in print over
the last couple of years, are at his blog at htpp://mourningabortion.blogspot.com. He never submits by snail mail since he has little money and since he loves, or at least doesn't have anything against, trees. Among things forthcoming is a chapbook called nobody wants to go to heaven but everybody wants to die from Poptritus Press in summer 2009 sometime. Early 2010 an anthology called laughing at funerals will be appearing with Epic Rites Publications, there's also a 50 poem chapbook from Epic Rites called hellbound which is on sale now. For Epic Rites he edits the chapbook series and the e-zines lines written w/ a razor and the thin edge of staring, as well as selecting work for the radio network.
Nick McMaster was born in London in 1969. A trained sculptor, he has had solo and group shows in UK and Poland. He has performed in numerous live art events around the country, most notably at the ICA in London. He has also been at times a musician, film maker and club and radio DJ. As part of Brighton-based trans-media live art band Maphead (www.maphead.org.uk), McMaster has been at the forefront of improvisational and experimental art forms for over ten years, with works ranging from the hidden street theatre of Ill Fitting Suits to the interactive literature event and Brighton Festival favourite Waiting for Inspiration. As co-founder of the electronica musicians’ collective the Spirit of Gravity, (www.spiritofgravity.com) he has performed with bands Malevich and This Sound Bureaucracy and is currently working on the solo project The Needle Exchange. More recently he created, wrote, directed and acted in a twelve part internet audio comedy soap opera entitled Hanover Square (www.hanoversquare.org.uk). 'Something (Borrowed)’ is his first short story. McMaster lives and works in Brighton, England.
Jonathan Mackenzie was born in Edinburgh on 22 March 1970. As a poet, he works almost exclusively in metered verse. He is currently working on a collection entitled Free Verse is an Oxymoron (Formal verse is tautology). Mackenzie is founder of the
online The Poetry Academy. He also provides poetry workshops for beginners on his blogsite where he features examples of various formal styles.
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri U.S.A.. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University
Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The
Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Poetry Super Highway, The Christian Science Monitor, Pirene's Fountain (Australia), Public Republic (Bulgaria), and other publications.
Robert Marsland is a writer living in Glasgow. He has had two collections of poetry published by Ettrick Forest Press www.efpress.com and is the founder and editor of Essence poetry magazine www.essencepoetry.co.uk His work has recently appeared in Gutter and The New Writer.
Steve Mann is in his fifties and lives nr Shrewsbury. He was published in Waiting for Gulliver (Caradoc Publications) alongside fellow poet Sally Richards. His first solo collection was cui bono? (Survivors' Press, 2007), which was launched at The Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden, London. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Express and in a number of journals and anthologies. He has read at Aberystwyth University, Keele University, and Staffordshire University. Also Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, Shrewsbury Library, Shrewsbury Museum, and at various other venues throughout Shrewsbury and Shropshire. www.stevemann.poetry.scriptmania.com
Joshua Meander is from Woodside, N.Y. For 20 years he has been hosting an Open Mic in Greenwich Village called Nomad's Choir.
RC Miller was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 1974. He is a poet and photographer currently living in New York City. Website: visionblues.blogspot.com
Elfriede Mollon was born on 18th September 1929 and raised in Berlin, Germany. Emigrated to US in 1954. Living in California since 1955. Five grown children, thirteen grandchildren. Twice widowed. Published eight books, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Adam Moorad's writing has recently appeared in 3 A.M. Magazine, Abjective, Storyglossia, and Underground Voices. He lives in Brooklyn and works in publishing. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com
Alan Morrison was born in 1974. His poetry first appeared in Don't Think of Tigers (The Do Not Press, 2001). Three chapbooks followed: Giving Light (Waterloo Press, 2003), Clocking-in for the Witching Hour and Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever (both Sixties Press, 2004). Morrison has appeared in over fifty journals, most recently Cadenza, Cannon's Mouth, The Journal, The London Magazine and Poetry Salzburg Review, Scottish Poetry Review. He has been a featured poet in Poetic Hours and online at Strix Varia. Short stories and prose published in Headstorms, Seeker and The Taj Mahal Review. His volume The Mansion Gardens (Paula Brown, 2006) was nominated for the 2006 TS Eliot Prize and was critically praised in journals such as The London Magazine and Other Poetry. His acclaimed play for voices, Picaresque, is currently in its second edition (Chipmunkapublishing). His second volume, A Tapestry of Absent Sitters (Waterloo Press, 2009), has been highly praised in The Journal, the Morning Star, Tears in t
he Fence and online at Stride and Poet-in-Residence, and was placed at No. 11 in the Purple Patch Small Press Top Twenty Best Individual Collections of 2009. A political long poem, Keir Hardie Street, is forthcoming from Smokestack in 2010; as are appearances in Stand and the major anthology The Night Shift (Five Leaves Publishing). Morrison is Poet-in-Residence at Mill View Psychiatric Hospital and recently edited and prefaced an anthology of service users' writing, The Hats We Wear/ Blank Versing the Past (Waterloo Press/NHS). In the small hours he edits the Recusant, which he also founded.
James Morrison was born in 1971. After graduating from York University with a 2.1 in Archeaology, he naturally trained as a journalist, at the University of Wales, in Cardiff. Former Arts and Entertainment Correspondent for The Independent on Sunday (2001-03), and Senior Lecturer in Journalism at Brighton City College (whose pinstriped politics and pyrhhic spin has inspired much of his dystopian fiction since), Morrison now freelances for The Independent and The Guardian and lectures in journalism at Kingston Univeristy. He is a regular contributor to The Literary Review. He was shortlisted for the Writers and Artists Yearbook Novel Writing Competition 2007 with a sample from his dystopian novel-in-progress, The Dwarf on the Scaffolding, and won a free manuscript appraisal from the Literary Consultancy. He also writes (often dystopian-inclined) short stories. He is author of the NCTJ Public Affairs for Journalists (Oxford University Press, 2009). He is brother of Alan Morrison.
Jemma Murat was born on the 13th of August 1985 in North London, Finsbury Park. Her work is influenced by John Berryman and Pablo Neruda, as well as Elizabeth Bishop.
Jennifer Newbury was born on the 29th of March 1984 in Yeovil, Somerset. She has lived in Dorset most of her life. She studied at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth, where she gained a First Class Honours in Photography. Newbury writes graphic novels, short stories, flash fiction and novels, since the age of 7. Recently she worked at Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, but gave up because she wanted a less conventional future. Her ambition is to work and live in the woods, running an educational centre to help people lower their carbon footprint and live simply. She currently works part time in a sweet shop and volunteer for conservation groups.
Ashok Niyogi is an Economics graduate from Presidency College, Calcutta. He made a career as an International Trader and has lived and worked in the Soviet Union, Europe and South East Asia in the ‘80s and ‘90s. At 52, he has been retired for some years and has been cashew farming, writing and traveling. He divides time between California, where his daughters live, Delhi and the Indian Himalayas. He is increasingly involved in his personal spiritual quest and studies scripture. He has published a book of poems, Tentatively, and has been extensively published in print and on-line magazines and in chapbook form in the USA, UK, Australia and Canada.
Alistair Noon was born in 1970 and grew up in Aylesbury. He co-edits the magazines Bordercrossing Berlin and No Man's Land,
and runs the annual Poetry Hearings festival in Berlin. His poems, reviews and translations from German, Russian and Chinese have appeared in Magma, The Wolf, Mimesis, Litter, Shearsman, Oasis, Poetry News, Chimera, Cipher Journal, Intercapillary Space, Realpoetik, Softblow and Versal, among others. Noon's debut collection, At the Emptying of Dustbins, has just been published by Oystercatcher Press www.oystercatcherpress.com. Noon has recently published versions of twelve poems by the German First World War Expressionist poet August Stramm in an e-chapbook at Intercapillary Space; his second print chapbook, In People's Park (Penumbra Editions); and translations of the German poet Monika Rinck (Barque Press).
John O’Donoghue’s journalism, poetry and fiction has appeared in The Observer, The TES, The London Magazine, PN Review, Ambit, Acumen, Orbis, Aesthetica and Poetry Express. Letter To Lord Rochester was published by Waterloo Press in 2004. His tribute to the Brighton poetry scene, The Beach Generation, appeared with Pighog in 2007. His first full volume, Brunch Poems,
is forthcoming from Waterloo Press in 2009. His memoir, Sectioned (John Murray, 2009) has been critically praised in most nationals including the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Morning Star and by Blake Morrison in the Guardian.
Mary O’Dwyer was born in 1963. She was brought up in children’s homes until she was sixteen, when she was fostered for two years. Mary qualified as a psychiatric nurse in 1985. She started writing poetry from the age of twenty-four and has had some of
her work published in various anthologies and in journals such as First Time and Poems in the Waiting Room. She has a small exhibition of her work currently on show in her local doctor’s surgery. Her first collection, A Coat of Blanket Dreams, has just been published by Creative Future www.creativefuture.org.uk
Ruary O'Siochain is a native of Dublin, his family now grown he quit his craft based business five years ago to devote time to writing and travel, and has taught English for periods in Latin America and Sri Lanka. He has had work published in Fire, Pulsar, Snakeskin, The New Writer amongst others, as well as a recent acceptance from Orbis. Favorite pastimes include motorbikes and gazing around the place, and he currently lives between Cardiff and Dublin.
Sergio A. Ortiz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on the 14th of March, 1951. He has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University. He is a retired teacher. His poems have been published
or are forthcoming this in: Salt River Review, Yellow Medicine, Autumn Sky Poetry, Rust and Moth, Presence-Haiku, Shamrock, 3LightsGallery, The Smoking Poet, The Journal of Truth and Consequence, Ganymede, Collective Fallout, Breadcrumb Scabs, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and The Driftwood Review.
Mick Parkin was born in Yorkshire in 1957. He graduated in 1978 with a Degree in Engineering from Newcastle University. He spent most of the 1980s in Spain. He worked as a bricklayer till 1987. Between 1990-95 he was a stand-up comic and performance poet, in London. He moved to Glasgow in 1995, and since then has been teaching creative writing to sixth form students in schools throughout Scotland and Ireland. He has no academic qualifications as a writer or teacher. The novel from which his contribution is extracted is - along with five others - now available to download for £1 at http://stores.lulu.com/mickparkin
Neal Pearce was born Dorking in 1967 and grew up near Horsham. He is a graduate of the Creative Futures mentoring scheme and some of his poems have recently appeared in their anthology amazement. His first pamphlet collection, Crate of Fuchsias, is forthcoming (also from Creative Futures, 2009).
J.R. Pearson was born in 1977 in Michigan. His work has been featured in Accapella Zoo, Red Fez, Niteblade, The Houston
Literary Review, Byline, Blood Pudding Press, The Indie Underground, The Cherry Blossom Review, Dogzplot, Ghoti, Ditch, Weave & Tipton. He still dreams of the Great Lakes & craves inevitable Nor'easter.
Si Philbrook was born on the 27th February 1966 in Brighton. He works with autistic children. His poetry has been published in print in ETC, Heroin Love Songs, The Alabaster & Mercury Journal, Copeland Books Love Poems Collection, Poetry Monthly and The Argus and online in LIT UP Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, Cherry Picked Hands, Eviscerator Heaven and Litmocracy. He has performed his poetry at Horseplay in Brighton and regularly comes last in the Brighton Hammer & Tongue poetry slam.
Kenneth Pobo was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, on August 24, 1954. But he now lives in Pennsylvania where he teaches Creative Writing and English at Widener University. He has a new book of poems out in 2008 from WordTech Press called Glass Garden. His online chapbook, Crazy Cakes, can be accessed at http://scars.tv.
Frank Praeger is a retired research biologist who was born Nov. 30, 1933 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His most recent publications have been primarily in the UK in Stand, Poetry Monthly, Dream Catcher, the Journal, Curlew, Bolts of Silk, Ink Sweat and Tears, and
in the USA in Peregrine and Pegasus. Currently lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Gillian Prew was born in Stirling, Scotland on 22nd June 1966. She has a Philosophy degree and a succession of low-paid, menial jobs to her credit. Having abandoned her first novel she currently writes poetry. She has been published online at 10K Poets and has poems in Eviscerator Heaven #1 & #4. She has also appeared in Up the Staircase and The Glasgow Review. She has two collection of poems, Moving on the Madness and Standing Still in Motion. She can be contacted at www.myspace.com/wordjunkiespace
Terry Quinn was born in Birmingham in 1951. He had a number of jobs before ending up as a night porter in Bournemouth Hospital where he found the technology fascinating. He qualified as a Medical Engineer in 1981 and has worked in hospitals round the UK and abroad. He moved to Preston in 1995. He started writing again in 2000 and has been published in most of the UK small press magazines. He hosts a weekly radio programme on Preston fm called Arts Scene ( Monday evening at 7-00pm and it's on line as well ).
Patrick Reen was born in 1986 in Port Elizabeth (now, Nelson Mandela Bay), South Africa. He is a third year undergraduate student at the University of Cape Town. This is his first published poem.
Philippa Rees was born and brought up in Southern Africa, where as an only child she accompanied her grandfather on safaris inspecting African schools in remote territories for weeks at a time. Something of that experience colours all her writing; solitude
is explored through most of her characters, whether through their inner spaces of courage, or the ostracism directed at unorthodox convictions. Married with four adult daughters, after sojourns in Mozambique, Germany and Florida, she now lives in Somerset, England. Between constant writing she has converted a collection of barns to provide a performing space for young classical musicians. Rees's poetry novel A Shadow in Yucatán (Trafford Publishing) is available at the following link:
Kevin Reid is 45 yrs old and was born in South West of Scotland. At present he lives and works as a librarian in Angus. He has a first class MA Hons. in English Literature. He has lived in various alternative communities in the North East of Scotland and also lived naked in a tipi community in the Spanish mountains. He has a key role in organising one of Scotland’s longest running teenage book awards. When not reading he writes, paints and enjoys the creative magnificence of digital technology. He has just completed a collection of poems he hopes to have piblished as his first chapbook.
Sally Richards' poetry has appeared in the journals Awen, Carillon, Cauldron, Countryside Matters, Country and Border Life, Dogma Publications, Earlyworks Press, Chimera, The Journal, Monomyth, Orbis, Poetry Express, The Shropshire Star, Splizz,
The Strix Varia, Touchstone, Warminster Community Radio (WCR) (featured poet). She has been shortlisted in the Earlyworks Press 2006 national poetry competition and was subsequently published in Routemasters & Mushrooms (Earlyworks Press 2006 winner’s anthology) and won third prize for her poem ‘Steep Hill’ in the Carillon magazine 2007 Open Poetry Competition. Publications: Waiting for Gulliver (with Steve Mann; Caradoc Publications 2005), Stained Glass (Survivors' Press, 2007), Sally Richards - The Bards No. 22 (Atlantean Publishing, 2008), Through the Silent Grove (Masque Publishing, 2008). She has a regular poetry column in Country and Border Life magazine and has recently composed commissions for the Montford Church Flower Festival and as a Poetry Champion for Shrewsbury Library (Shropshire County Council Library service). New website: www.sallyrichards.co.uk
Colin Robinson was born in Manchester on 7 March 1953. He emigrated to Australia in 1962. A writer and social activist, in Australia he was well known for his social justice statements and reports on issues such as homelessness, mental illness and poverty. Some of his poems were published in journals such as Meanjin, Mattoid and Poetry Australia. Since returning to England five years ago he had poems accepted by Poetry Scotland, Aesthetica and Ancient Heart amongst others. Robinson is currently working on a book on the experience of homelessness in contemporary Britain, for which he will be visiting towns up and down the East Coast line between London and Edinburgh to gather material. Robinson is also currently working for a charity called Barka who are involved in assisting their homeless compatriots in Britain.
Anick Roschi was born in France in 1947, of dual Swiss and French nationality. He has a diploma in Physics from the School of Engineer de Genève. He abandoned further studies to travel throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. On returning, Roschi became a socio-cultural worker at the Genevese Institute of Social Studies, for children of the peripheral districts of the city. He won Ireland's Fiele Filiochta Prize. His poetry has appeared in several anthologies in Belgium, Spain and Italy.
Pauline Rowe has had two pamphlets of poetry published, the latest being Playing Out Time (Driftwood, 2005). She has had work published in Smoke, The Rialto, Orbis, Iota, Smith’s Knoll and many more. She has written a libretto for composer Dominic Gannon’s cantata – Benares (2005) and a poetry film for Nothing Rhymes with Poets (First Take, 2006).
Hazel Roy works for Arts Promotion, Consultancy and Training in Manchester. Her experiences travel teaching among the impoverished children of Nepal in 2002 formed the subject of her eye-opening book Three Months in Nepal, and also inspired her play Rivers of Shame, which forged links that continue to this day both with theatre and social activists in Nepal and with the young people who took part. Profits from the book go to New Futures Nepal a charity which Roy was instrumental in helping set up.
Marybeth Rua-Larsen was born in 1963 at Fall River, Massachusetts. She been published or is forthcoming in: Measure, 14 by 14, The Barefoot Muse, Soundzine, The Raintown Review, Two Review and The Worcester Review, among others. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and once for The Best of the Net. She was also shortlisted for the 2007 Philbrick Award.
Philip Ruthen's creative non-fiction ebook One Hundred Days War was published by Chipmunkapublishing, and a first collection of poetry, Jetty View Holding, by Waterloo Press, both in 2008. He contributes reviews to The Poet's Letter and is current Chair of Survivors' Poetry.
Clare Saponia was born in London on 11th April 1978. She has a linguistic background and has lived abroad for a large proportion of my time since 1998 - Heidelberg, Grenoble, Hanover, Heraclion, Brussels and the past four years in Berlin. Since returning to London last summer, she has been participating in Open Mic sessions at the Poetry Cafe on a regular basis. She hasonly recently started to submit my work upon remigrating to the UK.
Farida Samerkhanova was born on March 20, 1957, in Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia. Her native language is Tatarian, her second Russian, and third, English, which has become her passion. She writes in English, but there are poems that appear in English and Russian. They are not translations - they come to her mind in both languages. Between 2007-2009 her poems, short stories and essays were published in Canadian Stories; Inscribed~A Magazine for Writers; The Maynard; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts; blueskiespoetry.ca, Danse Macabre (including Totentanze, All Saints’ Evening and Weihnachtsmarkt issues), Seeding the Snow
(the illustration is also her credit), The Write Place at the Write Time, Calliope (Issue #125 – Fall 2009), Word Salad Poetry Magazine, Tower Poetry and Of(f)Course – A Literary Journal. Some of her poems were included in The Maynard Anthology 2008
(Canada), and in the anthologies Immortal Verses (USA) and Favourite Memories (UK). New pieces are accepted for 2010 Winter/Spring edition of LanguageandCulture.net, issue #130 of Zigote in my Coffee (due out January 25, 2010), Other Clutter
(due December 2009), Canadian Immigrant Magazine (December 2009) and Calliope (Winter 2010 issue). Samerkhanova lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Kevin Saving was born and still lives in the Home Counties market town of Winslow. He has worked in the caring professions all his adult life and trained as a psychiatric nurse at the University of Northampton. He has self-published two chapbooks, A Brand of Day (1994) and Rough Bearings (2005). His work has been published in such diverse outlets as Poetry Express, The Independent on Sunday, Krax, Poetry Review and by The Happenstance press. His poem, 'Dog Otter', won third prize in the 2006 National Poetry Competition. Saving is also the Recusant's most prolific reviewer to date.
LB Sedlacek was born in Lenoir, NC (USA) in 1970. Poetry has appeared in a variety of publications such as Word Riot, Passport Journal, Heritage Writer, sidereality, Bear Creek Haiku, Down in the Cellar, Open Mouse, Transparent Words, Inkburns, Poet's Canvas, Spiky Palm, X Magazine, ReVerb, HazMat Review, 3Lights, and ART:MAG. Her chapbooks include Alexandra's Wreck and Average Bears. LB is co-host of the podcast Coffee House to Go.
Anthony Seidman was born in 1973. He is a poet, and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry. His work has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Nimrod, Rattle, Hofstra Review of Hispanic Literature, and in the cultural supplements for La Jornada, the major newspaper of Mexico City, and La Prensa, from Managua, Nicaragua. His recent books include Combustions (March Street Press) and Where Thirsts Intersect (The Bitter Oleander Press).
Sam Silva lives in North Caroline, USA. His poetry has appeared in legion journals including Samisdat, Sow's Ear, The American Muse, St. Andrews Review, Dog River Review, Third Lung Review, Main St. Rag, Charlotte Poetry Review, Parnasus, Rio Del Arts, Megaera, Big Bridge, Comrade Magazine, Ken Again and at least thirty others. Nine chapbooks published by Third Lung, M.A.F., Alpha Beat and Trouth Creek presses. These chapbooks were well received in newspaper reviews by Shelby Stephenson, Ron Bayes, Steve Smith, and the late poet laureate of North Carolina Sam Ragan, and solicited by Brown and Yale Universities for their libraries. Silva has a full length collection of poetry called Eating and Drinking based on a royalties contract signed with Bright Spark Creative. Sam Silva's Selected Poems is now available at: http://www.lulu.com/content/3645409
George Tod Slone is 61 years young. He is founding editor of The American Dissident, unemployed university professor, outcast, iconoclast, and fervent believer in “going upright and vital, and speaking the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson). todslone@yahoo.com www.theamericandissident.org
Felino Soriano (California) is a case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008), and has a chapbook forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2009). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic motivation. Website: www.felinosoriano.com
Serena Spinello is 26 years old, born and raised in New York. She currently resides on Long Island where she is completing an MA
in English. Her recent poems have been published in Clockwise Cat, The Houston Literary Review, Conceit Magazine, 63 Channels, Sien en Werden, The Centrifugal Eye, Cause and Effect, Mississippi Crow, Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Zygote in my Coffee, Hecale, Scorched Earth Publishing, The Flask Review and The Verse Marauder.
Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the ‘prehistoric’ epoch of print journals to modern
e-times. She was a former editor of South and West and is currently a contributing editor to the e-zine Eviscerator Heaven and Review Editor for Calliope Nerve. She has published over 300 poems and three chapbooks in her ‘first manifestation’ as a poet,
and has just released her first two chaps in 20 years, Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer Press) Sublunary Curse (Erbacce), an eBook, Paper Cuts (Calliope Nerve Media) and will release a co-authored volume Responsorials (NeoPoeisis Press) in early fall. Her most recent work appears in such 'zines as BlazeVox, ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. Recently, she has been ‘Featured Poet’ for the Guild of Outsider Writers, Counterexample Poetics and The Poetry Warrior.
Derek Stanford FRSL (1918-2008) was a British writer, known as a biographer, essayist and poet. He was educated at Upper Latymer School, Hammersmith, London. As a conscientious objector during World War II he served in the Non-combatant Corps.
He edited Resistance, a poetry magazine of just one issue, with David West in 1946. For a period in the early 1950s he worked with Muriel Spark on several books. Spark convinced him of the talent of Dylan Thomas, and Stanford wrote an early book on Thomas shortly after his death. Stanford was a prolific poet as well as critic. His many works included Three Poets of the Rhymers Club: Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, John Davidson (1974) and Inside the Forties: literary memoirs, 1937-1957 (1977), as well as numerous biographical studies of poets and writers including Anne and Emily Brontë, Christopher Fry and TS Eliot. Stanford's particular expertise was in the poetry of the late Victorian period, mostly the 1890s. He died on 19 December 2008 in Brighton, survived by his widow, poet Julie (Stanford) Whitby, who is now custodian of his literary estate.
Geoff Stevens was born in the industrial Black Country of England in 1942. He started writing poetry in the 1970s and as since been widely published. He has been editor of Purple Patch poetry magazine since 1976. His current collection is Absinthe on Your Icecream from Poetry Monthly Press, his current CD Live in the Studio. Website: www.geoffstevens.co.uk.
Paul Stevens was born in Yorkshire, England but lives in Australia. He has an Honours Degree in English and Archaeology, and teaches Literature. He has published poems and prose in print and pixel, most recently or imminently in Mannequin Envy, The Barefoot Muse, Shakespeare's Monkey Revue, The Literary Bohemian, The HyperTexts, Goblin Fruit, New Verse News, Abyss & Apex, Umbrella, Lighten Up Online, Lucid Rhythms, Ourobouros Review, Innisfree, Snakeskin, Unlikely 2.0, Centrifugal Eye and The Raintown Review. He edits The Flea and The Chimaera.
Peter Street was born in England 1948. He left school epileptic and barely able to read and write. To date has had three collections of poetry behind him: Out Of The Fire (Spike Books, 1993) (a Forward Nomination), Still Standing (TowPath Press, 1998), Trees Will Be Trees (Shoestring Press, 2001). In 2006 Peter was commissioned to write poetry for a Tony Bevan Catalogue, a way in, to Tony's paintings. His poetry has also been seen on television in Germany, Holland and here in England on both ITV and BBC. Waterloo Press will be publishing his New and Selected Poems in 2008. He lives and works in Atherton, Lancashire.He was the recent reipient of a grant from the Royal Literary Fund.
Ray Succre was born in 1976, on Bastille day, in California. He currently lives on the Southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Nthposition, and Coconut, as well as in numerous other publications across as many countries. His influences include Milton, Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman and Hart Crane.
Barry Tebb was born in Leeds in 1942. He studied English at Leeds Training College and sat at the feet of a series of Gregory Fellows in Poetry at the University of Leeds including Martin Bell, Peter Redgrove, Jon Silkin and David Wright. His first collection The Quarrel with Ourselves was praised by John Carey in The New Statesman and he appeared in Children of Albion (ed. Michael Horovitz), and in Three Regional Voices alongside Michael Longley and Ian Crichton-Smith. He edited Five Quiet Shouters which included work by the then unknown Angela Carter. In 1995 he founded Sixties Press and has edited the magazines, Literature and Psychoanalysis, Leeds Poetry Weekly and Poetry Leeds. He has published a novel, The Great Freedom, an autobiography, Dancing to Nobody’s Tune, and several collections of poetry including two selected volumes and a Collected Poems.
Michael Thorne was born in Hereford in 1982 and currently lives in London. He has travelled extensively; growing up in the Middle East and also living in Morocco. He has been published in a number of magazines including Blueprint, Gold Dust and most recently The Delinquent and The Poetry Warrior. He continues to write with due diligence and fanaticism. www.myspace.com/rhuardean; recordings: www.myspace.com/rhuardeanlive. His first collection, Divinity is Prised Loose, is forthcoming in 2009.
Xelís de Toro was born in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, in 1962. He is one of the leading Galician novelists of his generation and has won various prizes and awards for his fiction. His novels include: Seis cordas e un corazón (tr. Six strings and a Heart; Xerais, 1989), under the pseudonym Roque Morteiro, Non hai misericordia (tr. There Is No Mercy; Positivas, 1990), Terminal (Positivas, 1990), Os saltimbanquis no paraíso (The Saltimbanchi In Paradise; Sotelo Blanco, 1999), and The Corunna Boats (Infantil E Xuvenil, 2005). Children's books include: O trompetista e a lúa (The Trumpeter and the Moon; Edebá-Rodeira, 1998) and A máquina contacontos (The Storytelling Machine; Edebé-Rodeira, 2000), which have been translated into several languages. de
Toro has written extensively in academic publications on Galician culture. He was a founding member of the publishing house Edicións Positivas and directed its cultural magazine Anima+l. He writes for and performs with Rough Company, a collective of visual arts performers. He has recently edited a major anthology of short stories by Galicia’s leading writers, From the Beginning of the Sea (Foreign Demand, 2008), a project from the collective Boca2mouth, published in English. de Toro lives in Brighton, England,
and has lived in various areas of the UK since 1999.
David Trame was born in Venice, Italy, in 1953. He has been writing poems exclusively in English since 1993, many of which have been published in legion journalis including Poetry New Zealand, New Contrast, Nimrod , Poet Lore , Dream Catcher, The SHOp, River Oak, Aesthetica, the Hurricane Review, Black Mountain Review, The Haiku Quarterly, Sierra Nevada Review, Event, Hawaii Pacific Review, Stand, Urthona Magazine, Orbis. His poetry collection Re-Emerging was published by www.gattopublishing.com in 2006.
Chris G. Vaillancourt was born on April 5, 1959 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He has been involved in the art of writing as long as
he can remember. A Canadian poet, Vaillancourt has enjoyed publication in numerous small poetry magazines and newsletters, such as Pagan Lady Poetry Journal, The Inkling; The Lance; Opussum Review; Red Dragon; Poesia International; Plum Ruby Review; Windsor Star; Quills, Poetry Sharings, Poesy, Poetry Stop, Detour Memphis and a host of other print and ezine publications.
His chapbooks include: A Yellow Sunshine Night (4 Winds Press) and Teardrop of Coloured Soul (PublishAmerica). He has a BA in Psychology from the University of Windsor and a Diploma in Sacerdotal Ministry from the Saint Andrew Theological Institute.
Carrie Viens was born on 14 September, 1982 in Putnam Connecticut. She currently lives in Willimantic and attends graduate school for clinical psychology. This his her first published credit and also her first ever submission to a journal.
Christian Ward was born in 1980 in Westminster, London. He currently works as a writer in London. His work has appeared in Sein Und Werden, The Beat, and elsewhere.
J.S.Watts was born in London in 1961, read English at Somerville College, Oxford and now lives and writes in the flatlands of East Anglia. Her poetry, short fiction and reviews have been published in a variety of magazines and publications in Britain , Canada and the States including: Acumen, Ascent Aspirations, Brittle Star, Dark Horizons, Envoi, The Journal ,Orbis, Serendipity, Tandem and The Ugly Tree. In 2009 her short story Jenny won third prize in the 2009 Wells Literary Festival International Short Story Competition and was recently broadcast by the BBC.
Lee Whensley was born 7th December 1972 in Darlington (Greenbank Maternity hospital - the same as Vic Reeves!), but he has always lived slightly further north. The Storyteller is an intro to a book he's been writing for the past year. He is involved with a poetry forum site, gotpoetry.com.
Julie Whitby (Stanford) is a widely published poet, with appearances in the TLS, the Independent, the Daily Express, Ambit, Country Life, Poetry Review, etc. and in various anthologies. The Violet Room (Acumen, 1994) was her acclaimed debut collection;
a second volume, Poems for Lovers (Agenda Editions) appearing in 2001. Trained as an actress, she has worked in theatre and on TV: recently she gave three broadcasts for the BBC in connection with Poems for Lovers. She is the widow of poet and critic Derek Stanford, whose death last year was marked by obituaries in the Guardian and the Independent.
Petra Whiteley immigrated to UK in 1993 from the Czech Republic, where she studied Economics, Czech, English and Literature. Her poetry has appeared in Osprey, The Glasgow Review, ETC, Seven Circle Press and their CircleShow vol.1 printed anthology, The Gloom Cupboard, Eviscerator Heaven, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Counterexamplepoetics, Apt, Eleutheria and is due to appear in Clockwise Cat, Paraphilia and The Toronto Quarterly. She is also a prose editor for Eviscerator Heaven. Several of these e-zines also published her articles on political and current issues (left-wing position), history and methods of literary and poetic movements as well as essays on and reviews of current poets, lyricists - with more forthcoming. Ettrick Forest Press published her first poetry collection The Nomad's Trail in September 2008. A chapbook, The Moulding of Seers, is due to be published by the Shadow Archer Press in 2009. She is currently working on a children's book with visual artist Steve Viner.
Daniel Wilcox was born on April 24, 1947 in the very small town of Humboldt, Nebraska. He has a degree in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach. He is a former activist, teacher, wanderer who has farmed in the Middle East and lived on an island in eastern Pennsylvania while working in a mental hospital during the Vietnam War. His writing has appeared in The Other Side Magazine, various poetry journals such as The Centrifugal Eye, Sentinel Poetry Online, The November 3rd Club, and Words-Myth. The Clockwise Cat published five of his political poems in November 2007. His short story about the Middle East, The Faces of Stone, appeared in the September 2007 issue of The Danforth Review. He currently resides on the California coast with his wife and son.
Gwilym Williams was born in 1948. He currently lives in the baroque city of Vienna, Austria. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review, iota, Pulsar, Poetry Monthly, Current Affairs and ink-sweat-and-tears as well as in the Ragged Raven Press anthology, The White Car. He has also reviewed for New Hope International and Pulsar. Poetry collections: Mavericks (Kitchen Table Publications, 2007) and Genteel Messages (Poetry Monthly Press, 2008).
Richard Wink was born on 10th February 1984. He is a writer based in Norwich, England. He edits the litzine Gloom Cupboard. Currently his latest chapbook Delirium is a Disease of the Night is available from Shadow Archer Press www.shadowarcherpress.com.
Doog Wood's family has lived in Western North Carolina for over two-hundred years. His poems have appeared in Seam, Poetry Monthly, The New Writer and a recent anthology by Yarroway Mountain Press. He has read and lectured at Universities and Institutes in the United States, Europe, and North Africa. He lives and teaches in Dublin, Ireland.
Michael Wyndham was born on 23rd April 1975 in Hammersmith, London. He is a regular performer on the London poetry circuit, was first runner-up in Frogmore Press Poetry Competition 2006 and has been published in The Frogmore Papers, The Ugly Tree, The Delinquent & South Bank Poetry. Website: www.myspace.com/michaelwyndham
