Rachel Long is the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Womxn of Colour, a ‘fiercely community-minded’ collective formed in direct response to the lack of inclusivity and representation in literature and the academy.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes grew up in Ghana but was born in the UK where he later returned for further study, where with the friendship and tutelage of fellow black poets he became a vibrant new voice in British performance poetry. 

Many readers first come across Christina Rossetti as the writer of the words of the carol ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, or the deceptively simple, but actually strange and powerful, fairy tale in verse, Goblin Market. But her work ranges widely,…

Siobhan Harvey’s collection of poems Lost Relatives (2011) reveals her navigating shifting geographies in order to locate the sensorium of the self. Her compass is a pragmatic feminism that derives from personal experience, and from her formal education at Manchester…

Chris Wallace-Crabbe was born in 1934. His father was a journalist and his mother a pianist, and he describes his family tradition as ‘military-bohemian Scots’. After leaving school he worked as cadet metallurgist at the Royal Mint, Melbourne, then, at…

Julia Copus was born in London in 1969 and grew up in a house with three brothers who were learning to play musical instruments. Two of them later went on to be professional musicians, and Copus has said in interview…

Jane Duran (b. 1944) is a writer whose work is often preoccupied with memory and exile. Born in Cuba, she grew up in the USA and Chile, the daughter of an American mother and a Spanish father who met after…

Matthew Hollis (b. 1971) has published two collections of his own poetry, and has contributed to several other poetic careers as an editor at Faber and Faber. He has also co-edited 101 Poems against War and, with W N Herbert,…

Polly Clark was born in Toronto, Canada and brought up in Lancashire, Cumbria and the Borders of Scotland. She has pursued several careers, including zoo-keeping at Edinburgh Zoo, teaching English in Hungary, and publishing at Oxford University Press. She won…

Son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Gerald Stern grew up in Pittsburgh, in a house with no books. It wasn’t as if being a writer was discouraged, he says, it just wasn’t considered something that anyone in his family would…

Stevie Smith (1902-1971) led an outwardly uneventful life behind the respectable curtains of suburbia whilst nurturing a highly individual imagination. Born in Yorkshire, her father left the family to join the North Sea Patrol when she was very young. At…