Wendy Allen’s debut pamphlet, Plastic Tubed Little Bird, was published in 2023 by Broken Sleep. She is a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her pamphlet, Portrait in Mustard will be published in October 2024 by Seren.
Catherine Balaq
Catherine Balaq is a writer and body psychotherapist. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and nominated for the Pushcart and Forward Prize.
In 2022 Catherine was a recipient of The Poetry School MA scholarship. Her poetry play ‘Fuck the Moon’ was commissioned by Paper Nations and short-listed for the Bristol Old Vic Open Sessions 2019.
She is co-editor of Black Cat Press. Her debut collection ‘animaginary’ was published in July 2023 and was nominated for the Seamus Heaney Prize for first collection and the Pen Heaney Prize. Her second collection ‘Deathless‘ is published with Verve. Catherine also writes novels.
Lily Redwood lives off-grid in South Wales with her husband and two children. She writes about the everyday extraordinary from the political to the poetical. Lily combines spoken word with tender verse, which comes alive through her live performance. She has recently been Cheltenham Poetry Festival Slam Finalist and the Bristol Milk Poetry Slam winner.
Most of her poems are written on the notes app hiding in the toilet from her two children, or scribbled on the back of a shopping list, whilst burning the dinner.
Lily’s debut pamphlet, You Make Me Think of Swifts, is an unflinching and raw voice for motherhood, it is out now with The Collective Press.
Lily’s work has been described described as: “visceral, loving and brave”.
You can find lily online – @lilyredwoodpoet
Jay is a straight edge poet who writes on neurodivergence, gender, and the love of hardcore punk; doing so like he’s authoring an early 2000s emo LiveJournal post.
Since starting to perform in the spoken word scene a year ago, he has competed in UniSlam and Lyra Fest; and frequently haunts poetry events across Bath and Bristol
Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co- curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet will be published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue by Derek Jarman, which was directed by Neil Bartlett and featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Blue sold out its run across the UK and more dates are expected for the future.
Bradley Taylor
Bradley is the winner of Satellite’s recent Summer Slam.
When we asked Bradley for a bio, all he wrote was: ‘Bradley Taylor (he/him) is a poet from Birmingham. Apologies.’
Malaika Kegode is an award-winning writer, performer, creative producer and Associate Director at Theatre Royal Plymouth. She is based in Bristol and Plymouth. Her work is focused on uplifting and celebrating the overlooked and misunderstood. Beginning her arts career as a performance poet in 2014, Malaika has since developed her practice to encompass theatre, radio and film writing. She is a vocal advocate for creativity as a tool for healing and connection.
Winner of the Kevin Elyot Award (2022) and shortlisted for the Out-Spoken Poetry Award (2019), Malaika has also been included in the BME Power List, celebrating Bristol’s most influential Black & minority ethnic people, and was a 2021 recipient of the Apples & Snakes Jerwood Arts Poetry in Performance Award. She has performed around the UK at a number of celebrated venues, festivals and literary events, including The 100 Club, WOMAD and Hay Festival, and has worked with a wide-range of organisations as a writer, teacher and performer.
Malaika has been performing with folk-inspired prog-rock band Jakabol since 2018. Together they have performed at music and theatre venues alike – bringing a unique, exciting blend of poetry and music to diverse audiences. In 2021, Malaika and Jakabol collaborated on Outlier, which became the first piece of new writing produced for Bristol Old Vic’s main stage in 2021. Directed by Jenny Davies, Outlier fuses spoken word, original music and digital projection by Christopher Harrisson to tell Malaika’s autobiographical coming-of-age story of friendship, isolation and addiction in rural Devon. The show received critical success and fantastic audience reaction, and returned for a second run at Bristol Old Vic in 2022. The playtext for Outlier is published by Salamander Street.
Tackling themes as wide ranging as incel culture and identity in the internet age to millennial queerness and dinosaurs, Malaika’s writing has been performed around the country, including at Lyric Hammersmith, Watford Pumphouse, and Barbican Theatre Plymouth. She is an associate artist for Bristol Old Vic, part of the 2023 English Touring Theatre Nationwide Voices cohort and the current writer-in-residence at University of Bristol Theatre Collection.
As a workshop leader and mentor, Malaika has worked with organisations such as Arvon, Synergy Theatre Company and Narcotics Anonymous. As a trauma informed facilitator, she has specialised in running workshops with young and/or vulnerable people to help them realise the value of their stories. Many of the individuals Malaika has mentored have gone on to forge exciting and fulfilling careers in the arts.
Malaika has also worked film, and was the 2021 recipient of the the Eslpeth Kydd Memorial Prize for her screenwriting portfolio. She has been a curational associate for Watershed, a resident artist for Encounters Film Festival, and programme selector for a number of film festivals including Queer Vision and Tallinn Black Nights.
In 2015, Malaika founded, and continues to be artistic director and host of, Milk Poetry, an organisation that produces innovative spoken word gigs and workshops in a supportive environment across the South West, with monthly events at The Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol.
Other projects as writer and/or producer include: Rot. (tiata fahodzi); Field Notes (BBC Radio 4); Hear Her Voice (Neoteric Dance Company); Own Skin (Random Acts); The Best Ones (Inn Crowd); SheSpoke (Strike a Light); Level Up (Blahblahblah); Gloucester Slam Heats (Roundhouse); Finding Queerness in Kenya (Modern Queers); We are Not All Each Other (Black Ballad); Return to Form (Loud Poets); and her poetry collections Requite, Thalassic and Body Buffet.
Current projects include: The Colour of Dinosaurs (OTIC, Bristol Old Vic & Polka Theatre); The Combe (English Touring Theatre); Ruby, Baby (with thanks to the Kevin Elyot archive at University of Bristol Theatre Collection).
Jenny Mitchell won the Gregory O’Donoghue Prize 2023 for a single poem, and the Poetry Book Awards 2021 for her second collection, Map of a Plantation, which is on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University.
She’s won numerous competitions, is widely-published and has performed at the Houses of Parliament. Her latest publication is the pamphlet shared with Zoë Brigley and Roy McFarlane called Family Name.
Her Lost LanguageMap of a PlantationResurrection of a Black Man
Poet Tom Sastry grew up in Buckinghamshire and has lived in Bristol since 1999. After being chosen by Carol Ann Duffy as one of the 2016 Laureate’s Choice poets, his debut pamphlet Complicity (2016) was a Poetry School Book of the Year and a Poetry Book Society pamphlet choice. Since then, he has published two collections, both with Nine Arches Press: A Man’s House Catches Fire in 2019, which was highly commended in the Forward Prize and shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize, and his new book, You have no normal country to return to, which came out this year. Tom has been described by Hera Lindsay Bird as “a magician of deadpan” and praised by Carol Ann Duffy for how he “navigates the mysterious everyday…making friendships and love affairs new and strange”.
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