The submissions window for our writers development programme 2024 saw over three hundred submissions of exceptional poetry from writers from marginalised genders and under-represented backgrounds, and from that truly brilliant selection we are very proud to introduce you to our selected writers in more depth. These poets will be part of our published roster throughout 2024 and 2025, so with no further ado we are proud to present the poets themselves.
Rebecca Lockwood
Rebecca Lockwood is a flash fiction and prose poetry writer, and former Young Poet Laureate for Staffordshire. Rebecca’s move into flash fiction and prose poetry comes after her undergraduate degree at Lancaster University, where she studied English Literature, Creative Writing and Practice.
Since then, she’s set up a writing collective in Leeds, known as Leeds Writers Collab, where writers come together to exchange and feedback on their words.
Emike Akagbosu
Emike is a writer and spoken-word artist from London. She’s also Nigerian, though her passport’s expired.
She enjoys searching for the surreal in the mundane, and musing on the comfort of familiar spaces.
Shortlisted for the Heroica Poetry Prize 2024, her work will be featured in their upcoming anthology.
Memory Bhunu
Memory Bhunu is a Zimbabwean born poet and creative from the Black Country.
Her work is deeply confessional with themes of love, gender, religion and culture. She has headlined at The Poetry Hotel, Poetry on the Green, Overcoat Poetry, The Glee Club, Empower Poetry, Tell It To The Music and performed with Tell It for Birmingham Festival 23.
She was a member of Verve’s Collective 23/24 cohort. She is also a Capricorn.
Yerkezhan Berkembayeva
Yerkezhan (Zhan) Berkembayev (he/they) is a Swiss-Kazakh poet and bookseller. He graduated from the University of Birmingham with a BA in English and Creative Writing.
They were part of the winning team representing Birmingham in the UniSlam Competitions 2023. They featured as a headliner for ‘The Poetry Hotel’, a Birmingham open mic night, in May of 2023.
One of his poems appears in ‘The Purposeful Mayonnaise’ magazine issue 2.6 and his collection of dissertation poems In A Heartglow was long-listed for a pamphlet by the Emma Press.
Hannah Burrows
Hannah is a poet, facilitator and museum worker based in Birmingham. Their work questions gender, recovery, and queer existence, and is learning to answer with joy. They have featured on Brum Radio, Grizzly Pear, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, and SoFar sounds (with Tell it to the Music) and were part of Birmingham’s winning UniSlam team in 2022.
Their poems have been published by Verve Poetry Press, the Young Poet’s Network, English Heritage and more. They are a member of the Verve Poetry Collective for 2023-2024.
Introducing honorary mentee;
Victoria Spires
Victoria Spires grew her wings in the Norfolk fens, but now lives in Northampton, a place which claims to be in the middle of England, both geographically and spiritually. Her poems tend to stick to the margins – of obscure philosophy, overheard ideas, nature and place, the body, motherhood and desire. Her work has been featured in The Nuthatch, The Poetry Lighthouse, Freeverse Revolution, Gypsophila, and The Winged Moon, among others, with several journals and anthologies forthcoming. She is also a contributing editor at The Winged Moon magazine.
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