Vinita Agrawal was born on August 18th 1965 in Bikaner, India. She is a freelance writer and researcher based in Delhi.

 

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.

 

James Aitchison was born in Stirlingshire in 1938 and educated Glasgow University (MA 1960) and Strathclyde University (Ph D 1973). In the 1960s he was a publicity copywriter at The Scotsman, and later held minor posts in Scottish colleges and universities. He reviewed poetry for The Scotsman from the mid-1960s to the mid-70s and for The Herald (formerly The Glasgow Herald) from 1986 to 1992. James and his wife-muse, Norma, celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary in August 2017. Poetry collections: The Gates of Light (Mica Press, 2016), Foraging: New and Selected Poems (Worple Press 2009), Brain Scans (Scottish Cultural Press 1998), Second Nature (Aberdeen University Press 1990), Spheres (Chatto & Windus 1975), Sounds Before Sleep (Chatto & Windus 1971). Criticism: New Guide to Poetry and Poetics (Rodopi Editions, Amsterdam, 2013), The Golden Harvester: the Vision of Edwin Muir (Aberdeen University Press 1988). Since the publication of The Gates of Light his new poems have appeared in Acumen, Best Poems of 2016 (The Scottish Poetry Library on line anthology), Brittle Star, The Dark Horse, The Frogmore Papers, The Herald, London Grip, New Writing Scotland, Painted, spoken, Poetry Salzburg, Reach Poetry,
The Reader, Scottish Left Review, The Scottish Review.

 

Christopher Allen, a native Tennessean, lives with one foot in Munich, Germany and one in London. Allen's fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous journals and magazines. His story Red Toy Soldier took first prize in The Smoking Poet's third annual short story contest. Allen co-edits the literary ezine Metazen and writes about his obsession with seeing the world at www.imustbeoff.blogspot.com.

 

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.

 

Miggy Angel is a London-born poet, now resident of Nottingham. He has been published in 3am Magazine, and has also had work featured in Whalesound. He has performed his work at various venues nationwide, and blogs regularly at webleedink.wordpress.com

 

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.

 

Dr 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. He was Year of the Artist 2000 poet in residence at Hexham Races. Other commissioned work includes ‘Fire & Brimstone’ the story of Tynedale artist John Martin, and ‘The Hexham Celebration’, both for the Hexham Abbey Festival, and The Hexham Riot (publication and outdoor performance). He also has also compiled and edited a local history book The Town of Old Hexham and organised a mini-festival celebrating the life and work of Hexham born poet Wilfrid Gibson in 2003. He appeared again at the Hexham Abbey Festival in 2008 reciting the poetry of Gibson. His poetry book The Darkness Seeping, based on the Prior Leschman Chantry Chapel in Hexham Abbey, was published in 1997.

 

Sebastian Barker FRSL (16 April 1945–31 January 2014). 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. Editor of The London Magazine in 2002-08. 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).

 

Andrew Barnes is steadily building a reputation in the West Midlands poetry scene through publication in a number of literary magazines. He had work recently published in an anthology linked to the charity Mind and can regularly be found performing his work at Poetry Bites Kings Heath.

 

Christopher Barnes is a Newcastle-based poet. His first collection Lovebites is published by Chanticleer. He has written art criticism for Peel and Combustus magazines. He reads yearly at Poetry Scotland's Callendar Poetry Weekends. In 1998 he won a Northern Arts Writers' Award and went on to have a solo exhibition of poetry/artworks at The People's Theatre.

 

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, Thieves Jargon and 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. 

 

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 in Swansea. Poems in all three Caparison anthologies. 

 

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks and 3 more accepted for publication. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions & Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings and The Remission of Order (Winter Goose Publishing). Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Resonance (Dreaming Big Publications). Virtual Living will be published by Thurston Howl Publications. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing) and Call to Valor (Gnome on Pigs Productions). Sudden Conflicts (Lillicat Publishers). State of Rage (Rainy Day Reads Publishing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

 

Larry Beckett was born in Glendale, California, in 1947. His poetry has been published in Zyzzyva, Field, Margie, Salamander, the anthology Portland Lights from Nine Lights Press, and his first book, Songs and Sonnets from Rainy Day Women Press, was favourably reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Beat Poetry, a study of the San Francisco renaissance, was published by Beatdom Books. Paul Bunyan, a book-length poem, is out from Smokestack Books, and has received positive reviews in Zyzzyva and The Recusant. He performed the poem at the UK’s Ledbury Poetry Festival. Wyatt Earp, a novel in prose poetry, is forthcoming from Alternating Current Press. The complete U. S. Rivers was performed in a choral reading by a company of actors, and recorded. His work has been commended by Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Tom Clark, Ann Charters, David Young, and U.S. Poet Laureates W. S. Merwin and Charles Wright. Beckett lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

Tim Beech was born in Cannock, Staffordshire. He was educated at Flintshire College of Technology and Salford University where he gained a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. After a few years in academic research and teaching he became, for over twenty years, a shepherd and keeper of goats on a nature reserve near the Sussex coast. He has previously published a chapbook of poems, A Solitary Pine Tree In Sussex (Pighog Press, 2005).

 

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.

 

Stefanie Bennett, ex-blues singer & musician has published 17 books of poetry, a novel & a libretto - worked with Arts Action For Peace & been nominated for both Best of the Net & The Pushcart. A 'floating' poet of mixed ancestry [Irish/Italian/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia.

 

Mike Berger is a retired PhD psychologist from Oregon. He worked as a therapist for 30 years. He freelanced during those years.

 

Jerome Berglund is from Minneapolis, MN, USA. He has published senryu and haiku online and in print, in places including Asahi Shimbun, Failed Haiku, Bear Creek Haiku, Daily Haiga, Scarlet Dragonfly, Cold Moon Journal, and the Zen Space.       

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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.

 

David Betteridge (b. 1941) is the author of a collection of poems celebrating Glasgow’s radical traditions, Granny Albyn's Complaint (Smokestack Books, 2008). He is also the editor of a book celebrating the work-in at the UCS shipyards in 1971-2, A Rose Loupt Oot (2011). With the designer Tom Malone, he has produced a series of poetry pamphlets, published by Rhizome Press (2008-15). Most recent poetry chapbooks: Slave Songs and Symphonies (Culture Matters, 2016) and Flight and Fall: Remembering the Russian Revolution 100 Years On (2017).

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Farid S. Bitar is a Palestinian-American poet and painter. Born in Jerusalem in 1961, he has lived in exile for forty years. His books include Treasury of Arabic Love, Footprints in the Mist and two CDs Fatoosh and Shutat. His poems are included in A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry (Smokestack, 2017). His most recent collection is Screaming Olives (Smokestack, 2021).

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Mircea Boboc (born 18.08.1987 in Romania) is a Romanian poet and novelist, graphic artist and ambient music composer. He has published a chapbook of poems entitled The Semi-Lyrical Jukebox of Eccentric Poems and a fantasy novel called Elemental. He is also the author of the Graphic Exhibition Shadowed by Mountains. 

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Patrick Bolger is a writer and visual artist. His poetry gives voice to issues often silenced and marginalised in Irish society – including childhood sexual violence and the corrosive impact that childhood trauma, when met with silence at a familial, community and societal level, can have on both the individual and the collective. It explores themes of self-identity, addiction, mental health, masculinity, love and relationships. Born into a working-class family in rural County Wicklow, Patrick was the first in his family to attend college. Social justice and the role of privilege in creating class divisions and prejudices in society are also explored in his work.

 

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. Debut poetry chapbook The Winding Keys (Creative Future, 2010, ed. and intr. Alan Morrison). 

 

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, The Butcher's Dog, Envoi, The High Window, Iota, 14, Fire, The Interpreter's House, Poetry Nottingham, Poetry Salzburg Review, Red Ink and Other Poetry. Success in several competitions including a first prize in the Envoi International, a second place in The Writing Magazine Open, a highly-commended in The Petra Kenney, shortlisted for a recent Poetry Business Pamphlet and Collection competition and first prize winner in both the Sentinel Poetry Book Completion 2019/20 and the Littoral Poetry Book Competition 2020/21. Poetry collections: The Accidental Tourist (2008), Red Shift (Caparison Ebook, 2010), Red Hill: Selected Poems (Lapwing Publications, 2013), Hawk Rising (Lapwing, 2016), Marrowbones (SPM Publications), The Clear Daylight (Littoral Press, 2020).

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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 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 delivered 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.

 

Iain Britton is an Aotearoa/New Zealand poet, born 7/6/45, Palmerston North. Since 2008, he’s had five collections of poems published, mainly in the UK. Recently, poems have been published or are forthcoming in the Harvard Review, Poetry, Stand, Agenda, The Reader, Clinic, The Literateur, The Black Market Re-View, The Fortnightly Review, Long Poem Magazine, Poetry Wales, M58, Hypnopomp, The Projectionist's Playground and the Journal of Poetics Research.

A collection of poetry The Intaglio Poems was published by Hesterglock Press (UK) 2017.

 

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.

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Leon Brown was born in Dorset in 1973. After graduating from King’s College London in 1994, Brown taught English as a secondary school teacher and

as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in Portugal and Greece and later at Bristol University. He retrained as an Occupational Therapist. He is also

a qualified Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. Brown's poems have been published in Emergency Verse (Caparison, 2011), The Robin Hood Book (Caparison, 2012) and on Militant Thistles. He is currently writing his second novel, The Heart and Soul Army, a dystopian political thriller spanning the years 1970 to 2070. His interests are writing, literature, politics, psychology, film, music, walking and travel.

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Michael D. Brown is Professor of English at Nanjing Agriculture University, China Award winning author of 16 books, numerous publishing credits, with six volumes of poetry: lectures internationally, provides literary reviews for University journals. Recipient of the New York State Senator, John De Francisco Award for Poetry. Born in Syracuse, New York. Christian minister and former Pastor of the Berean Bible Fellowship.

 

Michael H. Brownstein (7/17/1953, Chicago, Illinois) has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samsidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013) and The Katy Trail, Mid-Missouri, 100 Degrees Outside and Other Poems (Kind of Hurricane Press, 2013). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).

 

Nick Burbridge is an Anglo-Irishpoet, playwright, novelist, documentary, short story and songwriter. His plays include Dirty Tricks (Soho Theatre Company), Vermin (Finborough), Cock Robin (Verity Bargate Award Runner-up/Brighton Festival), Scrap (South East Arts commission/Regional Tour), and double bills Neck/Cutting Room (Bright Red Theatre) and Acts Of Violence (Brighton Actors’ Theatre). For many years he ran his own fringe company, Tommy McDermott’s Theatre. BBC Radio Drama productions feature Grosse Fugue (Monday Play), Rites Of Passage (Afternoon Play), and several short stories. As a novelist, he had Operation Emerald (Pluto) published under the pseudonym Dominic McCartan. He collaborated with Captain Fred Holroyd on War Without Honour (Harrap/Medium), a non-fiction work launched at the House of Commons. His short stories have been printed in literary magazines, and Arts Council anthologies. He has written three collections of poetry: On Call (Envoi Poets), All Kinds Of Disorder, and The Unicycle Set (Waterloo Press). while poems have appeared in major periodicals, including Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, The Rialto, Stand etc. As a singer/songwriter, he has made seven albums with his band McDermott’s Two Hours - The Enemy Within, Live At Ferneham Hall, World Turned Upside Down, Claws And Wings, Disorder, Goodbye to the Madhouse, and Anticlockwise recorded in collaboration with The Levellers, who also covered his song 'Dirty Davey' on their eponymous number one-selling album, and who feature him on their live DVD, Chaos Theory. An acoustic album, Gathered, made with multi-instrumentalist, Tim Cotterell, won him the Spiral Earth Best Songwriter Award, 2013.

 

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 purs sted 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.

 

J.P. Celia was born in Ocala, Florida, USA in 1985. He has been published in Rattle magazine.

 

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., including novels The Politicos (2010) and Future Tense (2020), both by The Penniless Press. He hosts More Poetry at London’s Borough Market. He lectures in sociology and philosophy and lives in London. 

 

S. Chandramohan (b.1986) is based in India. His poems reflect the socio-political struggles of the marginalized, the working class and the nomadic outcasts of the World who are victimized and then forgotten as nations clash and wage relentless war. His work has been profiled in New Asia Writing, Mascara Literary Review and About Place journal, Counter-Punch poetry, Thump Print magazine, The Sentinel, American Diversity Report, Poetry 24 online., Green Left Weekly and News Verse News.

 

Yuan Changming, nine-time Pushcart nominee and author of seven chapbooks, published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific in Vancouver; credits include Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), Best New Poems Online, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 1,349 others worldwide.

 

Keith Chopping is an actor, voiceover artist and therapist. After being in a political no man's land for many years he has recently returned to socialism. He had a poem included in the recent campaign anthology Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State (Caparison).

 

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.

 

William Leo Coakley has been published in the Paris Review, London Magazine, The Nation, Aquarius, Poetry Review (London), and other publications  in America, England, Ireland, and Mexico. Since being selected for the Discovery series at the New York Poetry Center, he has read his poems often in public and on the television and radio. His poetry has won a Arvon Competition Prize, a W. B. Yeats Society Award, and the 2013 Der-Hovanessian Prize of the New England Poetry Club for a translation of a Constantine Cavafy poem. Born in Boston in 1937 but now also an Irish citizen, he is publisher of Helikon Press. He edited the first publication of Sean O'Casey's earliest extant play The Harvest Festival, a strike play about class struggle and militant union workers in 1913.

 

Ruben Connell was born in Leeds, Yorkshire in 1979. He is a new writer and in the past few months has had stories published (or accepted pending publication) in literary journals in the UK and the US. A first novel is due for completion someday soon. Poems in Litro and Menacing Hedge.

 

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. Poetry collection, This Is Not A Sonnet (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.

 

Lexie Cracknell was born in Leeds, Yorkshire on the 28 December 1990. She studies Philosophy at the University of Manchester. She has spent much of her adolescence hanging around the streets of Leeds which is where a lot of her inspiration comes from. She enjoys walking, reading and above all writing. She consider herself a bit of a romantic, but she thinks realistically she's a bit too down to earth in her personality for this to be fully the case. When not studying she enjoys painting, listening to music, going to gigs and a good philosophical session at the pub.

 

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). Stage work: Altered Egos (2010). Poetry collections: Perfect Mess (Biscuit Publishing, 2006), Speechless (Waterloo, 2007), Miming Silence (Waterloo, 2009), a poem from which was Highly Commended in the Forward Prize 2008, Loose Ends (Pighog, 20212), and Paper Cuts - New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2015). 

 

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.

 

Andy Croft lives in Middlesbrough, where he has been active for many years in community writing projects. Writing Residencies include the Hartlepool Headland, the Great North Run, the Southwell Poetry Festival and HMP Holme House. His verse-play about the history of Middlesbrough, Smoke! was shown at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2004. His books include Red Letter Days, Out of the Old Earth, A Weapon in the Struggle, Selected Poems of Randall Swingler, Holme and Away, Comrade Heart. He has written three novels and and forty-two books for teenagers, mostly about football. His books of poetry include Letters to Randall Swingler (Shoestring Press, 2017), 1948: A Novel in Verse (Five Leaves Publications, 2012), Nowhere Special, Gaps Between Hills (with Mark Robinson), Headland, Just as Blue, Great North, Comrade Laughter (Flambard), Ghost Writer (Five Leaves, 2008), Sticky (Flambard, 2009), Three Men on the Metro (with W.N. Herbert and Paul Summers) and five anthologies, Red Sky at Night (edited with Adrian Mitchell), North by North East (edited with Cynthia Fuller), Not Just a Game (with Sue Dymoke), The Night Shift (edited with Michael Baron and Jenny Swann) and Speaking English: Poems for John Lucas. He has given many poetry readings, including in Potsdam, Sofia, Moscow, Novosibirsk and London's Poetry International. He is founding editor of Smokestack Books. He writes a regular poetry column for the Morning Star.

 

Elaine Cusack was born on Tyneside in 1970. Her teenage writing was praised and encouraged by Bloodaxe Books and her first pamphlet, Bed and Breakfast with Lydia Lunch was published in 1986 . Since then Elaine's poems have won numerous awards and appeared in various collections as well as on national TV and radio. Her latest book is illustrated poetic memoir, The Princess of Felling. Elaine lives in Whitley Bay and blogs at www.dipdoomagazoo.wordpress.com

 

Alessandro Cusimano was born in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on July 2, 1967. He lives in Rome, where he is jewelry designer, writer, poet, translator. Son of a painter and a teacher, his life was marked, very young, by recurrent and painful bouts of depression. Nevertheless, this does not detract him from research and study of narrative techniques, his poetic style; with a special focus on visual arts, from painting to cinema, from photography to theatre, lived with deep introspection. Appeared recently, on the international literary stage, some of his writings are currently available on the US online library Black Cat Poems. Anarchist and visionary, painful and surreal, his works reflect on anxiety, crush conventions and illusions, proclaiming, with a barrage of words, that life is, by its nature, a scandal. An unconventional path, funny and desperate, populated by staring puppets and strange creatures whose life unfolds between sarcasm and resentful emotion. Poetry collection: Arabesques of a Nervous Wandering (Caparison, 2012).

 

Arjun Dahal is an undergrad student of Physics at Tri-Chandra Campus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. His passion lies in Physics, Mathematics, Music, Literature, and Philosophy. His Non-fiction has appeared in Blue Marble Review. His poetry has appeared/forthcoming in Burningword Literary Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Fable Online, Ann Arbor Review, and DWIT News.

 

Amir Darwish is a British/Syrian poet of Kurdish origin, living in Middlesbrough. He arrived in the UK late 2002 as an asylum seeker. Darwish completed a BA in history at Teesside University, England. Currently, he is a postgraduate student at Durham University, England, School of Government & International Affairs. His poetry published in the UK, USA, Pakistan, Finland, Morocco and Mexico. His work has been translated into Arabic, Finnish and Italian. Poetry collections: Don’t forget the Couscous (2015) and Dear Refugee (2019) are both published by Smokestack Books. 

 

Tatjana Debeljacki was born 1967 in Užice. She writes poetry, short stories, stories and haiku. She is a Member of Association of Writers of Serbia -UKS since 2004. She is a member of the Haiku Society of Serbia- Deputy editor of Diogen. She also is the editor of the magazine Poeta. She has four books of poetry published.

 

Francis Devine was  born in London, and is a retired Tutor, SIPTU College, Dublin. He has published Organising History: A Centenary of SIPTU, 1909-2009, and histories of the Communications Workers’ Union and the Medical Laboratory Scientists’ Association; was an editor of Saothar, Journal of the Irish Labour History Society; and, with Steve Byrne & Friends, issued the CD My Father Told Me in 2014 with a second CD, An Ownerless Corner of Earth, due later in 2019. His poetry collections are Red Star, Blue Moon (1997), May Dancer (2007) and Outside Left (2017). ‘Hup Gralton’ & ‘When Abdul Moneim Khalifa Met Darach Ó Catháin’ were first published in Red Star, Blue Moon (Elo Publications, Dublin, 1997), ‘The Steamship Hare’ was published in May Dancer (Watchword, Dublin, 2007).

 

Chris D'Errico was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA on February 11, 1970. He writes songs, poems and short prose, plays blues harmonica and works graveshift as an exterminator in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the author of several poetry collections, and his writings have appeared in print journals and online magazines scattered throughout cyberspace. He shares a home with his wife, Tracy, and their two cats, Hank and Arlo. Sometimes he performs as a one-man-band with his harmonica-heavy, experimental funk/blues project Sidewalk Beggar.

 

José Hernández Díaz was born in Anaheim, CA (1984). He is currently working on his MFA in poetry at Antioch University Los Angeles. He earned his BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley. His work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011, Bombay Gin, The Progressive, Kuikatl, Poetry Flash, 3:AM Magazine (UK), Tan lejos de dios (MEX), Merida Literary Magazine (MEX), The Delinquent (UK), El norte que viene (ESP), ditch poetry (CAN), Kerouac’s Dog (UK), Decanto (UK), Blood Lotus, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Huizache, Counterexample Poetics, Generations, The Legendary, Revista Contratiempo, La Gente Newsmagazine, BlazeVOX12, Emerge Literary Journal, among others. He has edited five novels for Floricanto Press.

 

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.

 

Olfa Drid is an English teacher, a PhD scholar and a  committed poetess from Tunisia. Her passion is meditation at the ailments and aches of the human race and her utmost target of writing is not art for art’s sake but to trigger thoughts, question given- for-granted facts, shake the readers’ hearts and uplift their souls. Her poems appeared in print and online reviews such as The Poet Sanctuary (2009), The Voices Project.org (March 2014), The Sirens Call ezine (April 2014), Taj Mahal Review (June 2014), The Haiku Journal (June 2014) and S/tick Review (July 2014). Apart from the passion of poetry, she is an ex-international volleyball player and she is also gifted in design and interior decoration.

 

Stephen Philip Druce is a poet based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK.

 

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. Poetry collections: Hurt Under Your Arm (Envoi), a pamphlet, In the Savage Gap, and A Third Colour (Culture Matters, 2018). 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. She 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 Brooklyn, New York, on August 2, 1942. Twice nominated for Best of the Net, as well as for the Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association, Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey. He has published more than 750 poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. His first full-length collection, Parallels, includes more than 200 of his previously published poems.

 

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.

 

Roger Ettenfield born in 1961 in Skipton, North Yorkshire. Lived and worked throughout the UK and the world, in various, random jobs, before settling on a career in English teaching, inevitably. Currently residing in Panama. First published on The Recusant, in 2019.

 

György Faludy (1910-2006), a towering figure of European literature, spent much of his life in political prison or exile. More of this poetry appears in Survivors: Hungarian Jewish Poets of the Holocaust translated & edited by Thomas Ország-Land (Smokestack Books, England, 2014).

 

Colleen M. Farrelly, currently a data scientist, is a freelance writer and editor in Miami, FL, whose works have recently appeared in Four and Twenty, Lake City Lights, Step Away, Vine Leaves, and PostPoetry. She was born August 8, 1985, and has been a bit of a nomad over the years. She enjoys the outdoors, volunteering with Veterans' nonprofits, and the poetry of Wilfred Owen.

 

Neil Fawcett was born in Stockport in 1962. His poetry moves freely between the political to the personal. Neil spent many years as a teacher and now spends his time writing in a damp shed, looking after his family or wandering aimlessly around Greece. His recent work is influenced by the great Greek communist poet Yiannis Ritsos, and he's working on a collection that reflects this influence. Fawcett has been widely published in magazines, online and in poetry anthologies. He has also been well placed and won a number of poetry competitions. www.neilfawcettpoet.com.

 

M.V. Feehan’s work has appeared in a number of Canadian and American journals: The Fiddlehead, Contemporary Verse II, Rosebud, Potpourri, the Ezine, Kmareka.com, and in the book, Echoes Of Elizabeth Bishop (comprised of those awarded in that competition—the poet’s 100th birthday). She worked for the journal, Room, for five years and in the last year became editor. She was the recipient of the Hedy Zimra Scholarship for Long Fiction from the Frequency Writing Program of RI. She lives with her husband and son—dividing their time between the city of Providence and Cape Breton Island.

 

Jim Ferguson is a poet and prose writer based in Glasgow. Born in 1961, Jim has been writing and publishing since 1986 and is presently a Creative Writing Tutor at John Wheatley College in Glasgow's East End. His collection the art of catching a bus and other poems is published by AK Press, Edinburgh. He has a website www.jimfergusonpoet.co.uk.

 

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 solely 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

 

R.G. Foster was born in Sunderland on the 28th October in 1993, and has lived in a smattering of places since. He has had work published in various journals, — Alliterati, Red Fez, Inclement, among others. He has done very little else in his short existence other than write poetry.

http://balladofalunatic.blogspot.co.uk/

 

James Fountain was born in Hartlepool in 1979. He was educated at Universities of Glasgow, Leeds and LMU Munich, and wrote the first ever PhD on poet Joseph Macleod, which passed in 2010. His memoir Out of Time (Book Guild Publishing) was published in 2006, and he has had two poetry pamphlets accepted for publication, Glaciation (Poetry Monthly Press, 2010) and The Last Stop (original plus press, 2018). Some of his poems have appeared in Acumen, The Journal, Dream Catcher, The Glasgow Review, The Recusant and London Grip. His latest pamphlet The Last Stop was adjudged runner-up by Imtiaz Dharker at the Ilkley Literature Festival Chapbook Competition, 2018. He was long-listed for the Erbacce Prize 2021 from 13,000 entrants. Fountain edited and introduced two of the books from A Drinan Trilogy, a trilogy of three books of poetry by Joseph Macleod with Andrew Duncan (Waterloo Press, 2012). His latest book, Hidden Sun: The Poetry of Joseph Macleod will be published in Spring 2022 by Waterloo Press and is the first book of literary criticism on neglected British poet Joseph Macleod (1903-84), who was close friends with Graham Greene, Adrian Stokes and Aldous Huxley.

 

Naomi Foyle is the author of three poetry collections: The Night Pavilion, a Autumn 2008 Poetry Book Society Recommendation and The World Cup (2010) both from Waterloo Press, and Adamantine (Red Hen/Pighog Press, US/UK, 2019). She has also published several pamphlets, including Red Hot & Bothered (Lansdowne Press, 2003), winner of the 2008 Apples and Snakes ‘The Book Bites Back’ Competition, Grace of the Gamblers: A Chantilly Chantey (Waterloo, 2010), No Enemy but Time (Waterloo, 2017) and Importents (Waterloo, 2021). As an editor for Waterloo Press, Survivors' Poetry (London) and Lagan Press (Belfast), Naomi Foyle has edited twenty full-length poetry collections, including The Privilege of Rain by David Swann (Waterloo Press, 2010), shortlisted for the 2011 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, Tantie Diablesse by Fawzia Muradali Kane, shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and Blue Wallpaper by Robert Hamberger, shortlisted for the 2020 Polari Prize. She is also the editor of the bilingual anthology 
A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry (Smokestack Books, 2017).   

 

David Francis is a singer-songwriter based in New York. In 2007 David released Poems, a CD of poems with music. Poems in Pennine Platform and Lucid Rhythms, and an article on the difference between song lyrics and poems in BigCityLit. CD Anthem for Green England by David Francis & the Global Village (http://www.CDBaby.com/all/davidfrancis) is available at Monochrome Museum.

 

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, Stephen Spender. His poetry has been published in The Beat. Website: www.myspace.com/simonfreedman.

 

Owen Gallagher was born in 1949. He is from Gorbals, Glasgow, and lives in London. His poetry collections include: Sat Guru Snowman (Peterloo Poets, 2001; reprinted 2004), A Good Enough Love (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, June 2015), Tea With the Taliban (Smokestack Books, 2012). He has published an illustrated children's book, The Sikh Snowman (Culture Matters, 2020). Gallagher has awards from The London Arts Board and The Society of Authors. His poems have been published widely in Britain and Ireland: The Independent, Time Out, PN Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Rialto, The SHop, Poetry Wales, London Magazine, New Welsh Review, Poetry London, The North. He has won poetry competitions and his poems have been displayed on London buses.

 

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 humour 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".

 

Jeremy Valentine Freeman Ganem (14/9/1972) hails originally from Kansas and is presently completing his doctorate in fin-de-siècle poetics and aesthetics at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, where he resides. He is assistant editor of RaVoN (Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net), his poetry has appeared in Boston Review and Van Gogh’s Ear, and his critical work has appeared in a variety of academic journals. In addition to a series of lyric works based on the interaction between aesthetics and ideology he is working on a long poem that re-works and deconstructs the Orpheus myth and an experimental post-pop novel centred in Kansas City at the millennium entitled The Golden Apocalypse of Yves Antichrist. He devotes his days to reading ornate books, living in dead centuries, looking at obscure art and walking in Montreal.

 

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

 

Sarah Gonnet was born in Derby in 1993. She has been experimenting with various forms of writing over the last few years. Recently she has been writing a lot of arts-orientated journalism for The Guardian, The Journal, Luna Luna, Sabotage Reviews, Screenjabber, PANK, and essays on female artists for The Bubble. Her poetry has been published in PUSH, Jotter’s United and The Cadaverdine. Under the pseudonym Azra Page, she has published two collections of autobiographical pieces: Catharsis and Dull Eyes and Scarred Faces. Carolyn Jess Cooke published several of her poems for her blog “On Depression”. IRONPress working with Red Squirrel Press have published one of her short stories, 'Impulse', in their collection Short not Sweet. Sarah read from this story at the Books on Tyne Festival. She also writes plays which are going through the development process of being performed at scratch nights. Poetry chapbook: Voices (Survivors' Poetry), which takes on one of the characters in her head — Azra.

 

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 and another, Wet And Dripping (Shadow Archer Press). Other poems of his can be seen in Thieves Jargon, Exquisite Corpse and SLAB.

 

Catherine Graham lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. She is a Northern Voices Poetry Award winner. Catherine has read at numerous poetry events including the Durham Literature Festival, Northern Stage, the Liverpool International Weekend of Poetry (with Jim Bennett, The Poetry Kit) and a number of Amnesty International Poetry benefits. Her chapbook Signs (ID on Tyne Press) was one of The Poetry Kit's top five recommended books for 2011. Catherine's first full collection Things I Will Put In My Mother's Pocket is published by Indigo Dreams Publishing. www.indigodreams.co.uk

 

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.

 

David Groulx was raised in the Northern Ontario mining community of Elliot Lake. He is proud of his Native roots – his mother is Ojibwe Indian and his father French Canadian. David’s poetry has appeared in over a 100 publications in England, Australia, Germany, Austria and the USA. He lives in a log home near Ottawa, Canada.

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