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Tracy K Smith is currently US Poet Laureate and teaches creative writing at Princeton University. She has published several poetry collections, including Life on Mars which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 and Wade in the Water (Penguin, 2018) which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in the UK. Her memoir Ordinary Light explores ideas of race, faith and her own creativity.

Liz Soar (b 1976) studied French at New College, Oxford and now teaches English at Headington School in Oxford.  Her poem ‘She’s a game old bird’ was written on Claire Askew’s ‘Creatrix’ course with the Poetry School.

Carla Sofia Ferreira is an American poet and teacher from Newark, New Jersey. Her work has appeared in a large number of journals and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut collection is A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024).

Mahendra Solanki is a poet, editor and Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. He was born in Nairobi, moving to the UK as a child, and his poetry often draws on this background. His first collection was Shadows of My Making (1986) and his most recent is The Lies We Tell (2014). He has worked as poet-in-residence in a secure prison and for First Story at the Nottingham Children’s Hospital.

Johnnie Sparkle is a retired mental health nurse, public health worker and jazz loving anagram from the West Midlands. He took up writing poetry following retirement and likes dogs, cats, trees, water and the sound of other people. He is grateful to the NHS for giving him a job and saving his life twice. So far.

Roberta Spear (1948 – 2003) was an American poet.  She grew up in California and published three collections of poetry. A posthumous collection of her work A Sweetness Rising: New and Selected Poems (2007) was edited by Philip Levine who highlighted her relish for using her poems to tell exotic stories about imaginary characters.