Carl Alexandersson is a queer poet based between Glasgow and London, hailing from Småland, Sweden. He was Highly Commended for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2022, a runner-up for the Grierson Verse Prize 2022, and selected for the BBC Words First programme in 2021. His work has appeared in Atrium, streetcake magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, and more. His debut poetry pamphlet Förgätmigej // Forget-me-not was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press in 2023.

Mymona Bibi is a Bengali-British writer, creative facilitator, and ESOL teacher based in Newcastle. She is interested in multilingualism, urban landscapes, inequality, and home. Her writing has been featured in the Ilkley Literature Festival, Magma Poetry, Butcher's Dog, Corridor8 and Hajar Press. She has produced and performed at events such as the Newcastle Fringe Festival and NOVUM Festival. She is the founder of World Writes - a multilingual community writing group.

Becky Brookfield is a North West based poet whose work mixes poetry, theatre, and live art to explore nature, femininity, transformation, and the grittier, darker edges of life. Her writing is sharp, witty, and unflinching, finding connection and absurdity in the messy, everyday surreal. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University, and her work appears in Joy//Us: An Anthology of Resistance and Joy (Arachne Press, 2023).

Oliver Carmichael was born and raised in County Durham. In 2024 he won the Winchester Poetry Prize and the Aurora Prize for Writing. He was longlisted for the 2025 Disabled Poets Prize and is the recipient of the Michael Donaghy Award which supports a poet to attend the first Arvon Advanced Writing Programme. He is a graduate of Lancaster University. 

Alexis Deese-Smith is an emerging writer whose work appears in London Grip, ANMLY, and is forthcoming in Swim Press. In 2025, she was listed as an Honorable Mention by Plentitutude's Prizes in Nonfiction, shortlisted for The Poetry Society Free Verse competition, and named a finalist in Frontier’s Misfits Poetry Prize.

Rachel Jeffcoat is a Yorkshire-born, Hampshire-based poet and educator whose work has been widely published, including in Poetry Ireland Review, Under the Radar, Banshee, Tears in the Fence and First Aid (Pan Macmillan 2025). She was one of the winners of the 2024 Candlestick Press competition, Poems of Light, has been nominated for Pushcart and Forward Prizes, and was most recently Commended in the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize.

Natasha Kinsella is an Irish-born poet and writer based in Scotland. Her work explores silence, inheritance, and the rituals of repair. Her poems have appeared in Abridged, ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action, Beyond Words Magazine, and New Writers. She was highly commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and awarded second place in the New Writers competition. She also works within the visual arts as an advocate and development manager, supporting artists and makers across Scotland.

Rona Luo is a queer, neurodivergent poet interested in the spaces between borders and boundaries. Her visual poetry has been exhibited at Royal Festival Hall, and her writing has appeared in Magma, Propel, fourteen poems, The Massachusetts Review, Honey Literary, and more. She received the Creative Futures Gold Prize in Poetry in 2024. She has been supported by Tin House, Kundiman, Southbank Centre New Poets' Collective, and Poetry School London.

Lisa Marie Shepherd is an English-Cypriot poet who lives in the West Midlands with her husband and 2 children. She was part of the 2023-2025 assistant writer's cohort for the Writing West Midlands Spark initiative, and her poems have been published in anthologies and online. In her limited spare time, she enjoys going to see indie bands, reading at open mics and walking her dog on Cannock Chase.

Olivia Tuck’s work has been published by the Poetry Society and Broken Sleep, and in Propel, Under the Radar, Poetry Wales (forthcoming) and Magma (forthcoming). She won the 2025 Winchester Poetry Prize, was placed second in the 2023 Jane Martin Poetry Prize awarded by Girton College, Cambridge, and was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. She is an associate editor at Lighthouse.