Moniza
Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. She has five
collections of poetry. The first, The Country at My Shoulder
(OUP, 1993), was a PBS Recommendation, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and the
Whitbread poetry prizes, and selected for the New Generation Poets promotion.
The most recent is How the Stone Found Its Voice (Bloodaxe, 2005). She
received a Cholmondeley Award in 2002.
Angela Anderson is an American dancer and journalist born and raised in the Californian Mojave desert. She currently lives with her husband and two sons in Brunswick, Germany, where she choreographs for musical theatre and teaches butoh performance. Her poetry and prose have been published in Rohwedder International Journal of Liturature and Art and Writing For Our Lives. She can be contacted at: angeladawna@hotmail.com.
Simon Armitage
was born in 1963 and lives in West Yorkshire. He has published nine volumes of
poetry including Killing Time (Faber & Faber, 1999) and Selected
Poems (Faber & Faber, 2001) His most recent collections are The
Universal Home Doctor and Travelling Songs (Faber & Faber in
2002). He has received numerous awards for his poetry including the Sunday Times
Author of the Year, one of the first Forward Prizes and a Lannan Award. He
writes for radio, television and film, and is the author of four stage plays,
including Mister Heracles, a version of the Euripides play The Madness
of Heracles. His recent dramatisation of The Odyssey, commissioned by the BBC,
was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2004 and is available through BBC Worldwide. He
received an Ivor Novello Award for his song-lyrics in the Channel 4 film
Feltham Sings, which also won a BAFTA. His first novel, Little Green Man,
was published by Penguin in 2001. His second novel The White Stuff was
published in 2004.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more
than forty books of fiction poetry, and critical essays. Her most recent book The Tent, a collection of mini-fictions
was published by McClelland & Stewart.
Her novel, Oryx and Crake, was
short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Giller Prize in Canada. Her other
books include the 2000 Booker Prize winning, The Blind Assassin, Alias
Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in
Italy, The Robber Bride, Cat’s Eye, The Handmaid’s Tale and The
Penelopiad. Margaret Atwood lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
A
C Bevan: poems have appeared in newspapers & magazines in the
United Kingdom, Europe & America – most notably in Poetry Review, Poetry
Salzburg & Caveat Lector
respectively, as well as the anthology: Bleeding
Hearts – Love Poems for the Nervous & Highly Strung (Aurum Press [UK] /
St Martins Press [US]). His first pamphlet collection, Of
Sea Graves and Sand Shrines, was published by Arc Publications in
January 2001 & led to further interest from Channel 4 & BBC Radio. His first full length collection will be
published by Salmon in 2007.
Jim
Boring lives on the edge of
the Everglades in Margate, Florida, USA.
His poetry has appeared in many venues most notably the literary
magazine, Lit
Pot. His most recent manuscript, Condo and Other Poems, reflects on
the process of aging in a community of the aged.
Alan Brownjohn was born in London on 28 July 1931 and was educated
at Merton College, Oxford. He worked as a schoolteacher between 1957 and 1965
and lectured at Battersea College of Education and South Bank Polytechnic until
he left to become a full-time freelance writer in 1979. His first collection of
poetry, The Railings, was published in 1961. Other poetry books include Collected
Poems 1952-1983 (1983) and The Observation Car (1990). He is also
the author of three novels, as well as two books for children and a critical
study of the poet Philip Larkin.
Richard
Alan Bunch, born in
Honolulu, grew up in the Napa Valley. His poetry works include Summer Hawk and Wading the Russian River. Night
Blooms is a selection of journal entries on philosophy, literature, and
religion. His stories have appeared in several venues. He is also author of the
play, The Russian River Returns. His
poetry has appeared in Orbis, Avocet,
Poetry New Zealand, Oregon Review, Poetry
Nottingham and the Hawai’i Review.
His latest poetry collection is Running
for Daybreak (Mellen Poetry Press).
Michael R. Burch is the editor of The HyperTexts, where he has published the work of three Pulitzer Prize nominees and recent winners of the T. S. Eliot, Richard Wilbur and Howard Nemerov awards. His work has appeared over 400 times in literary journals around the globe, including The Chariton Review, Poetry Magazine, Verse, Poet Lore, Unlikely Stories, Light Quarterly, Writer’s Digest – The Year’s Best Writing 2003, The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003, The Lyric, ByLine, Icon and Nebo.
Elizabeth Burns
has published two collections of poetry, Ophelia and other poems (Polygon, 1991) and The Gift
of Light (diehard, 2000),
and several pamphlets with Galdragon Press. Her work has also been
published in anthologies such as Dream State: The New Scottish Poets
(Polygon, 1994 & 2002), Atoms of Delight: An Anthology of Scottish
Haiku and Short Poems (Pocketbooks, 2001), Modern Scottish
Women Poets (Canongate,
2003) and Handsel: Poems for Births and Baby Namings (Scottish Poetry Library, 2005).
Lorna Callery is a Glasgow based artist, writer and tutor interested in broadening the boundaries between art forms, specifically visual art and creative writing. Much of Lorna’s art is text based, experimenting with concrete poetry within the gallery context in order to challenge the viewer’s perceptions of what constitutes a particular art form. Is it visual art/is it poetry? Why do we feel the need to constantly categorise what we have created? For more information contact: polkadotpunks@hotmail.com
Catherine Chandler was born in New York and raised in Pennsylvania. In 1972, she and her husband, Hugo Oliveira, settled in Montreal, Canada, where she lectures in Spanish at McGill University’s Department of Translation Studies. Her poems and translations have been published or will soon appear in such journals as SPSM&H (Amelia), The Lyric, Iambs and Trochees, Raintown Review, Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Texas Poetry Journal, and Modern Haiku. Samples of her work can be read at The HyperTexts at www.thehypertexts.com under “Contemporary Poets/Artists”.
David Constantine has published half a dozen volumes of poetry, most recently a Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books 2004) and a volume of short stories, Under the Dam (Comma Press 2005). He is a translator of Hölderlin, Goethe and Brecht. With his wife Helen he edits the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation.
Maurice
Cox is an author/songsmith
whose anthems have been sung throughout the UK, in venues ranging from small
folk clubs and civic centres to the Royal Albert Hall (Holy Day! 2001,
in collaboration with Andrew Campling, founder/musical director of the Dockland
Singers). After surviving major surgery
for cancer, he now lives in retirement in Fort William in the Scottish
Highlands.
Cyril
Dabydeen: work has been anthologized in over 20 volumes
in seven countries, including in the Penguin
Book of Caribbean Verse and the Oxford
Book of Caribbean Poetry. His own
recent books include Imaginary Origins:
Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Press, UK), Play a Song Somebody: New and Selected Stories (Mosaic Press, Canada),
and the novel Drums of My Flesh (TSAR, Canada). He has juried for Canada’s
Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and America’s Neustadt International Prize
for Literature, and has read across North America, UK and Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. He teaches English at the
University of Ottawa, Canada. He was official
Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1984-87).
Doug Draime, poet, short story writer and playwright has been writing and publishing since the late 1960's. His most recent books include: "Slaves Of The Harvest" (Indian Heritage Publishing, 2002), "Unoccupied Zone" (Pitchfork Press, 2004), "Spleen" an online book, (Poetic Inhalation, 2005), and forthcoming from Scintillating Publications, "Spiders And Madmen". Awarded PEN grants in 1987 and 1991. His work has appeared in hundreds of print magazines and online journals. He currently lives in Oregon with his wife, writer Carol Shepherd-Draime.
Carol Ann Duffy, born in Glasgow in 1955, grew up in Stafford and attended university in Liverpool. She lived for several years in London before moving back north again and now lives in Manchester with her young daughter. Her poetry has been critically acclaimed and she has received numerous awards. Her collections include Standing Female Nude and The Other Country, which both earned her a Scottish Arts Council Award; Selling Manhattan, which won a Somerset Maugham Award (1988), a Dylan Thomas Award (1989) and a Cholmondelay Award (1992); Mean Time, which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Forward Prize and the Whitbread Award for Poetry (1993); and The World's Wife, which received the E.M. Forster Award in the USA. Since becoming a mother herself, she has also begun to write for children and her collections of poetry for younger readers are entitled Meeting Midnight (shortlisted for the Whitbread Children's book of the year in 1999) and The Oldest Girl In The World (which received the Signal Prize in 2000). She has also written versions of Grimm's dairy tales and is the editor of several anthologies for both adults and children.
Ian Duhig worked with homeless people for 15 years before becoming a full-time writer and teacher of writing. He has written four books of poetry, the most recent of which - The Lammas Hireling (Picador 2003) - was a PBS Choice and shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot Best Collection Prizes. His next, The Speed of Dark, is due from Picador in 2007.
Ruth Fainlight was born in New York City, but has lived in England since the age of 15. She has published thirteen collections of poems in England and the USA, as well as two volumes of short stories. Books of her poems have appeared in Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian translation. She received the Hawthornden and Cholmondeley Awards in 1994, and her collection, Sugar-Paper Blue (Bloodaxe, 1997) was shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread Award. Her latest collection is Moon Wheels (Bloodaxe, 2006).
Vicki
Feaver was born in Nottingham in 1943. She studied music at Durham
University and later, after bringing up four children, English at University
College London. She has published three volumes of poetry, Close Relatives (Secker 1981), The
Handless Maiden (Cape 1994) and The
Book of Blood (Cape 2006). Previously a professor at the University of
Chichester, she moved to Scotland in 2000 and lives with her husband and dog on
the edge of the Pentlands.
Elaine Feinstein
is a prize-winning poet, novelist and biographer. In 1990, she received a
Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and was given an Honorary D.Litt from the
University of Leicester . She is a Fellow of he Royal Society of Literature .
Her versions of the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva were first published in 1971, and
remain in print from OUP/Carcanet in the UK and Penguin in USA. Her Collected
Poems and Translations (2002) was a Poetry Book Society Special
Commendation. Her web site is at
www.ElaineFeinstein.com
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti was born in
Yonkers in 1919. In 1953 he co-founded, with Peter D. Martin, City Lights, one
of the first all-paperbound bookstores in the country, and by 1955 had launched
the City Lights publishing house, whose publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl
in 1956 led to the publisher’s arrest on obscenity charges. In a widely
publicized first amendment case, the publishers were vindicated, drawing
international attention to San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers.
Ferlinghetti is the author of A Coney Island of the Mind, one of the
most popular poetry books in the U.S., with close to 1,000,000 copies in print.
His most recent book is A Far Rockaway of the Heart. In August 1998, he
was named San Francisco’s first Poet Laureate.
Annie Finch is an American poet, translator, librettist, critic and editor. She has published four books of poetry, including Calendars (Tupelo, 2003), shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award; The Encyclopaedia of Scotland (Salt Publishing, 2004), and a translation of the Complete Poems of Louise Labé (University of Chicago Press, 2006). Her opera based on the life of Marina Tsvetaeva premiered from American Opera Projects in 2003. Her most recent of several anthologies and books on poetics is The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self (Michigan, 2005). She directs the Stonecoast Brief-Residency MFA at the University of Southern Maine, and her website is at www.anniefinch.com
Carolyn
Finlay grew up in Australia and
came to England in 1969. Her poems have appeared in magazines such as Terrible Work, Acid Angel, Fire, Outposts, etc, and in the anthologies Earth Ascending (Stride 1995) and Earth Songs (Green Books 2002). In her
two books of poetry, Giveaway (Stride
1996) and Foreigner (Waterdog Press
2001), she explores and celebrates our human experience of simultaneous
multi-levelled reality. Her short story, 'Zoom', appears in Necrologue, the Diva Book of the Dead and
the Undead (Diva Books 2003).
Charles Adés Fishman is director of the Distinguished Speakers Program at
Farmingdale State University and poetry editor of New Works Review. His books include
Mortal Companions, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust,
and The Death Mazurka, which was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize
in Poetry. His most recent
collections are Country of Memory
(Uccelli Press), and 5,000 Bells (Cross-Cultural Communications), both 2004. His new book of poems, Chopin’s Piano, has just been published by Time Being Books, which
will publish a revised second edition of Blood
to Remember in 2007.
Rose Flint, an award winning poet, has three collections Blue Horse of Morning (Seren) Firesigns (Poetry Salzburg) and Nekyia (Stride). She is an art therapist and uses the healing qualities pf poetry in her work as Lead Writer for the Kingfisher Project, based in the hospital and community of Salisbury. She teaches creative writing and is a tutor for Arvon and Ty Newydd. Her themes celebrates the sacredness of life, with a sense of spirit and relationship.
Donald Gardner: London-born, lived in New York in the 1960s where he read his poetry with Ginsberg, Corso and others. He has lived in Holland since 1979. He is a translator of poetry, for instance, Octavio Paz’s ‘Sun Stone’. His collection How to get the Most out of Your Jet Lag appeared in 2001(Ye Olde Font Shoppe, New Haven). He has a new collection almost out, The Glittering Sea (Hearing Eye 2006) and his book of translations of Dutch poet Remco Campert will also appear in 2006 (Arc Publications). His website is: www.donaldgardner.net
Roger Garfitt is
a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Wales, Swansea, and runs
Poetry Masterclasses for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing
Education at Madingley Hall. He
performs Poetry & Jazz with Nikki Iles and the John Williams Septet and
Poetry & Dulcimer Music with Sue Harris on the hammered dulcimer. His Selected
Poems are published by Carcanet and
he is completing a memoir, The Horseman’s
Word, for Secker & Warburg.
Magi Gibson has published four collections
of poetry. She won the Scotland on Sunday/Women 2000 Writing Prize. Poems in
Scottish Love Poems and Modern Scottish Women Poets (both Canongate), and The
Twentieth Century Book of Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh University Press). Her
third poetry collection, Wild Women of a Certain Age, is now in its third print
run. She lives in Scotland with partner, comedy writer and stand-up comedian,
Ian Macpherson.
Geoffrey Godbert has fourteen collections of poetry, two of essays, a memoir and a treatise. He is co-editor of two Faber poetry anthologies and editor of an anthology of prose poems. His poems are included in a modern ballet. Of his work, Harold Pinter comments: "Geoffrey will certainly end up with the poets in heaven."
Jack Granath lives in Kansas City, Missouri and works in a library in Kansas City, Kansas. His poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review and The Formalist among other publications. More information is available at www.jackgranath.com.
Alasdair Gray: born in 1934 and
dwelling in Glasgow became jack of several trades being unable to earn a living
by one, therefore cannot be taken seriously. He has written plays, novels,
stories, verses, literary histories and political pamphlets; has designed and
illustrated books, mainly his own; has painted portraits, landscapes, stage
scenery and mural decorations. A Life in Pictures, a book about his art, and
John Tunnock, another novel will probably be published in 2007. His website is www.alasdairgray.co.uk
Rasma Haidri grew up in the U.S. and currently lives on the arctic seacoast of Norway. Her writing has appeared in literary journals such as Nimrod, Prairie Schooner and Fine Madness; and been widely anthologized, most recently in Only the Sea Keeps (Bayeux Arts), and Waking up American (Seal Press).
Jan Oscar Hansen: Norwegian poet, published in magazines, collections, in anthologies and on the Internet.
Kerry Hardie: Born 1951, lives in Co. Kilkenny, Ireland. Publications: Poetry –A Furious Place (Gallery Press, 1996); Cry For The Hot Belly (Gallery Press, 2000); The Sky Didn’t Fall (Gallery Press, 2003). The Silence Came Close forthcoming, 2006. Novels: Hannie Bennet’s Winter Marriage (Harper Collins 2000); The Bird Woman (Harper Collins, July 2006). Many prizes and commendations. Has been awarded residencies in Portugal, Switzerland, Paris, Scotland, Spain. Reviews for the Boston Globe. Her work has been widely anthologised.
Oz Hardwick
is a writer, photographer and would-be musician - frequently in combination. He
is passionate about poetry, medieval art & literature, and 70s bands most
people have forgotten. In order to pay the rent he lectures in English
Literature. His most recent collection is The
Kind Ghosts (bluechrome, 2004) and he edited the anthology, Truths and Disguises (bluechrome, 2005).
Tony Harrison was born in Leeds in 1937. His many collections of poems include: The Loiners (awarded the Geoffrey Faber memorial Prize in 1972); Palladas: Poems (1975); from The School Of Eloquence (1981); Continuous (1981); Selected Poems (Penguin, 1984 second ed. 1987, third ed.1995); v. (Bloodaxe Books, 1985 new enlarged ed. 1989); The Gaze Of The Gorgon (Bloodaxe, 1992, awarded Whitbread Prize for Poetry); The Shadow Of Hiroshima and other film poems (Faber, 1995, awarded the William Heinemann Prize 1996) and Laureate’s Block And Other Poems ( Penguin, 2000). His most recent collection of poems, Under The Clock was published in May 2005 (Penguin Books).
John
Heath-Stubbs was born in 1918. He was educated at The Queen's College,
Oxford, where his contemporaries were C.S.Lewis and Tolkein. He published his
first poems in the wartime volume Eight Oxford Poets and has gone on to
write poetry, plays and literary essays that ignore fashion. One of the most
celebrated poets of his generation, he is noted also for his translations of
Middle Eastern poets, his role as teacher to new generations of writers and as
a voice keeping the long form poem an active and vibrant tradition. He received
the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Michael
Henry lives in Cheltenham. He
has had three collections published with Enitharmon, the last of which,
“Footnote to History” was published in 2001. He is currently completing a new
collection. His poetry also appeared in many anthologies and poetry magazines.
David Hill is a writer, performer and translator of verse, he has contributed to film and theatre productions, national newspapers, poster campaigns, and over 20 anthologies. His live engagements have included literary readings, slams, business and private functions, cabarets and comedy shows in the UK, the US, Austria, Denmark, Holland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. He has also written lyrics for recording artists.
Michael Horovitz is
editor-publisher of New Departures, and torchbearer-presenter of Poetry
Olympics festivals and Jazz Poetry SuperJams. He has recently formed the
William Blake Klezmatrix band, to perform Blake’s lyrics and much else in
musical settings that range from blues to klezmer and folk-rock to calypso. His
books in print include a 670-line rural rhapsody Midsummer Morning Jog Log, and Wordsounds
& Sightlines: New & Selected Poems, as well as the multi-facetted POW!, POP!, POM and POT! Anthologies. Contact: New Departures, PO Box 9819, London W11 2GQ, England. Email: info@poetryolympics.com Website: www.poetryolmypics.com
Heather Taylor Johnson moved from America to Australia in 1999 and found a home in Adelaide, South Australia. Along with gaining her permanent residency, a true blue Aussie husband and two children who call her ‘mum’, she is currently the poetry editor for the literary magazine Wet Ink and is working on the finishing touches to her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. The novel manuscript that transpired as a result of her degree was longlisted for the Australian/Vogel Award in 2005.
Pat Jourdan: newest book is Average Sunday Afternoon, (Poetry Monthly Press, ISBN 1-905126-29-8). Part of the Galway writing scene for many years. Published Turpentine in 2004 (Motet, ISBN 0-9542399-1-1). She is mentioned as “a little-known but gifted poet” by Ian McEwan in the novel “Saturday” (2005).
Arthur Joyce is perhaps best known for his newspaper columns and books on the history of the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada. He has been an organizer of poetry tours and cafés since the '80s, and a frequent performer on the Kootenay literary scene. His poetry and essays on poetics have been published in various Canadian literary journals, including Canadian Author, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Whetstone, The New Orphic Review, and Horsefly.
Julie Kane, a native of Boston and longtime resident of Louisiana, teaches at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Her second full-length poetry collection, Rhythm & Booze (University of Illinois Press, 2003) was selected by Maxine Kumin as a winner in the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the 2005 Poets’ Prize. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, London Magazine, Verse Daily, Feminist Studies, and The Formalist, as well as in various anthologies.
Mimi Khalvati was born in Iran. Her
Carcanet collections include 'In White Ink' (1991), 'Mirrorwork' (1995), for
which she received an Arts Council of England Writers' Award, 'Entries on
Light' (1997), 'Selected Poems' (2000) and 'The Chine' (2002). She
is the founder of the Poetry School where she teaches and currently holds
a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at City University.
David Knopfler: founder of rock
group Dire Straits, he
subsequently faithfully pursued his own musical vision, writing and producing
his own compositions on nine solo CDs to date. A lifelong member of
organizations like Amnesty International, David has always made uncompromising
life choices: "I don't regard what I do as remotely glamorous. I write, record and perform my music because I completely
love doing it and despite any so called
celebrity status that sometimes comes
with the job." As well as having
produced a clutch of underscores for film and TV projects, David’s first book of poetry entitled Blood Stones and Rhythmic Beasts
was released in 2005 by Blackwing Books.
Silvia Kofler was born in Graz, Austria, has lived in London
and Paris and moved to Kansas City in 1979.
She is editor/publisher of Thorny Locust. Her work has been published in
New Letters, Black Moon, Potpourri, The Same (published a version of
“Dangling”), The Kansas City Star and
numerous other publications. Her book, From the
Suburbs with the Wedding Dress in its Coffin/Vom Vorort mit dem Hochzeitskleid
im Sarg, was published by The Edwin Mellen Press. She is a member of the
American Literary Translators Association, and lectures at KU and Rockhurst
University.
Tom Leonard: is best known for poetry written in the urban
speech of the Glasgow area, a mode which was revolutionary and innovative when
his first collection Six Glasgow Poems was published in 1969. His work
has exposed the pernicious condescension in the literary establishment towards
the vernacular of working class people, in both the spoken and the written
word. He is motivated by a fiercely honest, socialist conviction. In his
editorial introduction to Radical Renfrew: Poetry from the French Revolution
to the First World War (1990), he lambasts language snobbery and the
literary values that oppress those who 'had lost the right to equality of
dialogue with those in possession of Queen's English or "good" Scots'.
Places of the Mind, his biographical study of James Thomson, author of The
City of Dreadful Night, was published in 1993. Other work includes Intimate
Voices: Selected Work 1965-1983 (1984), Satires and Profanities (1984),
On the Mass Bombing of Iraq and Kuwait (1991) and Reports from the
Present: Selected Work 1982-94 (1995).
Rupert Loydell is Lecturer in Creative Writing at University College Falmouth, Managing Editor of Stride Publications, Editor of Stride magazine, and a regular contributor to Tangents magazine. Recent publications include A Conference of Voices, The Museum of Light and The Smallest Death, as well as several collaborative books.
Jeanne Macdonald was awarded her
MA, Writing Poetry, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2003. Her first collection, white lies are
harmless, Diamond Twig, published 2004.
She launched Blinking Eye
Publishing in 2004, promoting the work of writers over 50, and acknowledges
North East Arts Council, England, for financial support. Blinking Eye publishes 2 books each year
from the results of an annual poetry competition: overall winner’s collection,
and an anthology of poems by commended poets.
Scott Malby is a frequent contributor to journals
worldwide. His work has been translated into German, French and Italian. He
resides in Coos Bay, Oregon, U.S.A.
Mike Matthews lives in
Austin, Texas, with his wife, Venus, and his three children: two boys, Jade and
Drae, and his four month old daughter, Sophia.
He teaches college English classes in Killeen, Texas. He received his MFA in creative writing from
Texas State University in San Marcos in 1998, and has since published several
poems in journals around the United States and in Scotland. Mike Matthews can be contacted by email: MikDavid@hotmail.com
Anne McCrady is a poet, storyteller and inspirational speaker whose
writing appears in journals, anthologies and performances including the
Texas Storytelling Festival and the National Storytelling Conference. Her
award-winning collection of poems, Along Greathouse Road, is available
in print (Eakin Press, 2004) and on CD (InSpiritry Productions, 2005) along
with her narrative gift book, Kevin
and the Seven Prayers (InSpiritry Press, 2002). Anne is a Texas Commission
on the Arts Touring Artist, a councilor for the Poetry Society of Texas and an
assistant editor for Gin Bender Poetry Review. She welcomes visitors to her
website, www.InSpiritry.com
Andrew McNeil is a teacher/writer living in Fife. He and his partner have two great kids. He was born in Ohio, USA and soon imbibed Scots and the salty air in the East Neuk of Fife. He was educated at Edinburgh University and Jordanhill College. In work-holed severely by postgraduate studies he dreams and has visions of a Scotland coming to fully esteem itself through any language and dream!
Robert
Mezey I was
born in Philadephia in 1935 and educated at Kenyon College, the U. of Iowa, and
Stanford U. My first book, The Lovemaker, won the Lamont and was
published in 1961. I have published a number of other volumes of verse,
inlcuding White Blossoms, The Door Standing Open and Evening
Wind, the most recent being my Collected Poems (U. of Arkansas
Press, 2000) which won the Poets Prize. I have co-edited (with Donald Justice)
the collected poems of Henri Coulette, and I have edited the selected poems of
Thomas Hardy, E. A. Robinson and Dick Barnes, and three anthologies, Naked
Poetry, Poems From The Hebrew and Poems Of The American West. With
Dick Barnes I translated the collected poems of Jorge Luis Borges. I have also
been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Guggenheim Foundation and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and a prize from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Edwin Morgan was
born 27 April 1920 in Glasgow. He began
his studies at Glasgow University in 1937. He interrupted his studies in 1940
to join the Royal Army Medical Corps, then returned to university in 1946. He
graduated the following year with a First Class Honours Degree, and became
lecturer at Glasgow University, turning down a scholarship to Oxford; he took
early retirement in 1980. He published numerous volumes of poetry, as well as
collections of essays, most of which are available at Carcanet Press and
Mariscat Press. His volume of Collected
Poems (Carcanet Press, 1990) is the largest, a very wide ranging
collection. He was announced Glasgow's first Poet Laureate in autumn 1999, and
was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2000. His website is at: www.edwinmorgan.com
Daniele Pantano is a poet, translator, and editor of Haerter, M.A.G., and Niederngasse. He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, of Sicilian and German parentage. An exile, he currently lives in Brandon, Florida, with his wife and their two children.
Clare
E. Potter was born in South Wales. After three years in Mississippi
studying an MA in Afro-Caribbean literature, she spent ten years teaching and
writing in
New Orleans. She won the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry in 2004 and her
poetry collection, Spilling Histories will be published this year by
Cinnamon Press. She has just started her Phd in creative writing at Cardiff
University. Clare recently won a Future Focus on the Arts Award and is using
the bursary to fund a trip to New Orleans to write a book of prose-poems about
the impact of Katrina. Clare can be contacted by email: clare_potter_5@hotmail.com
David Radavich
is the author of Slain
Species (Court Poetry Press, London), By the Way: Poems over the Years
(Buttonwood, 1998), and Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2000). His
plays have been performed across the U.S., including five Off-Off-Broadway
productions, and in Europe. He also enjoys writing essays on poetry
and drama.
Jay Ramsay is the
author of many books including his New & Selected Poems Kingdom of the Edge (Element, 1999), Alchemy—the art of transformation (Thorsons,
1997: also available in Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, German, and Dutch), Tao Te Ching with Martin Palmer
(Element/Vega reprint 2002), his radical new book Crucible of Love—the alchemy of passionate relationships (O Books,
2005), and The Heart’s Ragged Evangelist
(PSAvalon, 2005).
Rochelle Ratner: books include two novels: Bobby's Girl (Coffee House Press, 1986) and The Lion's Share (Coffee House Press, 1991) and sixteen poetry books, including House and Home (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003) and Beggars at the Wall (Ikon, October 2005). An anthology she edited, Bearing Life: Women's Writings on Childlessness, was published in January 2000 by The Feminist Press. She lives in New York City where she teaches Creative Writing in alternative environments and reviews regularly for Library Journal. More information and links to her writing on the Internet can be found on her homepage: www.rochelleratner.com.
Ron Riddell, writer and peace-activist, is one of New Zealand’s most widely published poets. Riddell has worked and performed in a number of countries, including Scotland, England, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Australia and the U.S.A., where his latest book, the award-winning collection, Leaves of Light was published in a bi-lingual edition (English/Spanish), in 2005. He has also been involved in a number of peace and cultural initiatives in Colombia, Chile, U.S.A., El Salvador and New Zealand. A painter, musician and the author of a number of plays and novels, he has published 15 collections of verse. At present, he lives in the New Zealand capital city, Wellington, where he is Director of The Wellington International Poetry Festival.
Dee Rimbaud is an artist, poet and novelist. He is author of two full-length poetry
collections, The Bad Seed and Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels;
and one novel, Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God. As 2006 begins, he is frantically trying to
redecorate his home to put it on the market and simultaneously editing and
preparing the manuscript of The Book Of Hopes And Dreams. By the time it is published he anticipates
he will be on the road somewhere in Europe with his partner, Su and daughter,
Rosie Sunshine. His adventures will be
recorded in his travel-blog: http://aaron-aardvark.blogspot.com/ His website is at: www.thunderburst.co.uk
Lori Romero is an
editor and co-founder of Cezanne's
Carrot . Her first chapbook, Wall to Wall, was published by
Finishing Line Press. Her short story, "Strange Saints," was a
semifinalist in the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award, and her short screenplay
won the Manhattan Short Film Festival's Scripts and Screenplay Competition. Her
poetry and fiction have been published in over sixty journals and anthologies.
She was nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize. For more information, see her
website: www.tarecords.com/loriromero.html
or email her; lori@tarecords.com
Lawrence
Sail has published nine collections of
poems, most recently Eye-Baby
(Bloodaxe Books, 2006). In 2005
Enitharmon brought out a collection of his essays, Cross-currents. He has
edited a number of anthologies, including First
and Always (Faber, 1988) and (co-edited with Kevin Crossley-Holland) The New Exeter Book of Riddles
(Enitharmon, 1999) and Light Unlocked:
Christmas Card Poems (Enitharmon
2005). He has been chairman of The
Arvon Foundation and Director of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, and has
frequently worked abroad for the British Council, ioncluding visits to Bosnia,
Colombia, Egypt, India and Ukraine. In
2004 he received a Cholmondeley Award.
Lorraine
Sautner, a resident of
Fairfield County, Connecticut, is the Founder/Director of “Poets vs Poverty,” a
humanitarian arts organization that fights poverty “one word at a time” through
poetry-related venues, including AEGIS magazine. Ms. Sautner enjoys reading and writing poetry with
transcendental, spiritual, and romantic themes. She holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science; a
bachelor’s degree in English/Writing; and hopes to begin divinity school in
late 2006. She also writes under the
pen name Sterling Peony.
Maggie Sawkins
lives in Southsea, Hampshire where she organises Tongues & Grooves poetry
and music nights. She has been widely
published, and a pamphlet collection, Charcot’s Pet, is available from
Flarestack Publishing. She is working on her first full collection, whose
title, Dear Mr Popa, is in response to Vasko Popa’s The Little Box. In 2004, she read at The Troubadour in
London as one of their new summer voices. Maggie teaches at South Downs College
near Portsmouth where she is also a mental health supports needs co-ordinator.
Myra Schneider: recent poetry books are Insisting on Yellow, new and selected
poems, (Enitharmon, 2000), Writing
My Way Through Cancer, a fleshed-out journal with poems (Jessica Kingsley
2003) and Multiplying The Moon
(Enitharmon, 2004). She has co-edited three anthologies of women’s poetry
and a fourth, partly Arts Council funded, Images of Women, will
be published in November 2006. She wrote the popular writing handbook:
Writing for Self-Discovery (Element
1998) with John Killick. She is one of the Poetry School’s core tutors.
Andrew Shelley: Poet/critic. Born 1962, West Yorkshire, England. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, First Class Degree, Research Fellowship, Ph.D. on Samuel Beckett's later prose. Part-time teaching. Articles, poems and reviews in many magazines. Regular contributor to the English magazine Tears in the Fence. Previous publications include Peaceworks (The Many Press, 1996) and Requiem Tree (Spectacular Diseases, 2002). Thornsongs is a pamphlet of seven prose poems issued in the States by Unarmed in 2005 and distributed free.
Penelope Shuttle
was born in Staines,
Middlesex, in 1947. Since 1980 she has published six collections of poems, a
Selected Poems (Poetry Book Society Recommendation, 1997, available from
Carcanet), novels, and is co-author of two widely-read prose works, The Wise
Wound and Alchemy for Women, dealing with the psychology and creative aspect of
menstruation and its part in redefining the role and reality of women. Her work
has been widely anthologised. Since 1970 she has lived in Falmouth, Cornwall.
K.V. Skene: poems have appeared in numerous Canadian, U.K., U.S., Irish and Australian publications Two chapbooks, Only a Dragon (2002) and A Calendar of Rain (2004), won the Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award (Canada). Another chapbook, Edith (a series of poems on Nurse Edith Cavell) was published by Flarestack Publishing in 2004. A book Love in the (Irrational) Imperfect is forthcoming from Hidden Brook Press (Canada). A long-term expat Canadian, K.V. Skene is presently living in Oxford.
Thomas R. Smith is
a poet, essayist, editor, and teacher living in River Falls, Wisconsin.
His books of poetry include Keeping the Star (New Rivers Press, 1988),
Horse of Earth (Holy Cow! Press, 1994), The Dark Indigo Current (Holy Cow!
Press, 2000), and Winter Hours (Red Dragonfly Press, 2005), as well as many
chapbooks, most recently Peace Vigil: Poems for an Election Year (and
After) (2004). His work was selected for The Best American Poetry 1999,
the prestigious Scribner anthology. His work has appeared in the UK
in Urthona and in Ireland in Poetry Ireland.
Jon
Stallworthy was educated at Rugby School, in the Royal West African
Frontier Force, and at Magdalen College, Oxford. His books include eight collections of poems, two critical
studies of Yeats’ poetry, The Penguin
Book of Love Poetry, The Fragments and War Poems, and two biographies: Wilfred Owen (which won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the
W.H.Smith Literary Award, the E.M.Forster Award) and Louis MacNeice (which won the Southern Arts Literary Prize). More recently, he has published Rounding the Horn: Collected Poems and
Singing School, ‘the autobiography we would like all poets to write’ (Oxford Today). Having been a Professor of English Literature at Cornell and
Oxford, he is now a Senior Research Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a
Fellow of the British Academy.
Anne Stevenson is the author of over a dozen volumes of
poetry, including this year's Granny
Scarecrow, The
Collected Poems, 1955-1995, Four and a
Half Dancing Men, and Correspondences. She is the author of several volumes
of literary criticism as well, and also of the controversial Bitter Fame:
A Life of Sylvia Plath. Stevenson was writer-in-residence at the
University of Dundee, 1973-75, a fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, 1975-77,
and writer-in-residence at Bulmershe College, Reading, Berkshire, 1977-78, and
the University of Edinburgh, 1987-89. She was also a Northern Arts Literary
Fellow at Newcastle and Durham, 1981-82 and 1984-85.
Ray Succre has been writing with a profession in mind for about thirteen years. He began writing poetry as his primary work in 1997 and has also written several stageplays and collections of short stories. He began publishing August of 2004, and has been published in Aesthetica, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Nottingham, and around fifty others both in the U.S. and abroad. He currently lives as a resident of southern coastal Oregon, U.S., with his loving wife Maisy, and his baby boy, Painter. He is between dishwashing jobs. More on Ray Succre can be found at his webpage: http://raysuccre.blogspot.com
Tricia Torrington
lives in Cheltenham and has been
published in a number of anthologies and magazines. She was one of two writers
featured in “Rubin’s Figure” in 1986. She is also a member of the Border Poets
and recently edited and appeared in their latest anthology, “A Brush with
Words”, a joint venture with the Royal Academy Schools Alumni. She is married
to the poet, Michael Henry.
Fiona Ritchie Walker is originally from Montrose, Angus in Scotland and now lives in Blaydon, near Newcastle. She has two poetry collections: Lip Reading (Diamond Twig) and Garibaldi's Legs (Iron Press). Her poetry also features in magazines and anthologies, including Virago/Writing Women's Wild Cards, the British Council/Picador New Writing 11 and several anthologies from New Writing Scotland. Fiona’s short stories have been published on literary websites and in Newcastle Stories 1, Bracket and September Stories (all Comma Press). In 2006, her story sequence will appear in Ellipsis 2, (Comma) together with stories by Anne Stevenson and Polly Clark.
Joanna M. Weston, born in England, lives in Western Canada; married, 3 sons, two cats. A writer, knitter, and gardener. Is a full-time writer of poetry, short-stories, children’s books and poetry reviews. Has published internationally for many years online, in print journals and anthologies. Has a middle-reader, The Willow-Tree Girl, and a chapbook, Watch-Night, in print.
Jackie Wills has published three collections of poetry. Her first, Powder Tower, was shortlisted for the 1995 T.S.Eliot prize. The most recent is Fever Tree (Arc 2003). She's been a ghost writer and journalist. Her poetry's appeared on a dress by Helen Storey, paper napkins, on cafe walls, canvases and t shirts. She lives in Brighton. Some of her work can be read on: http://jackiewillspoetry.blogspot.com/
Juliet Wilson is an Edinburgh based poet,
reviewer and charity worker. Her poetry has been widely published and she has
performed at various venues in Edinburgh. Her pamphlet ‘Bougainvillea Dancing’
sold out earlier this year, having raised over £200 for charities working in
Malawi. Her website is at: http://julietwilson.mysite.wandoo-members.co.uk and she has a blog of environmental poetry,
crafts and reviews at http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com.
Bohdan
Yuri: Ukrainian/American writer living in Florida. “Ukraina: Sons
& Daughters” c.1984 - a collection of short stories. “The
Letters”, c. 1991 - (non-fiction). Has had poems published in various
magazines such as; Niederngasse, Carillon, Thought, Panic, X Magazine, Rearview
Quarterly, etc.