Readers
Zain Kakooza
Zain is a poet and artist from East London. He says: "I write about what comes to me, from love to politics, and everything inbetween. I'm a big fan of rap, and I like to think that influence comes through in my writing too."
Jane Monson
Jane lives in Cambridge as a poet, researcher, Specialist Mentor for disabled students at the University of Cambridge and Undergraduate Tutor at Homerton College. Previously she was an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing at Anglia Ruskin University. Her PhD is on the prose poetry of Francis Ponge and she has a Poetry MA in Creative Writing from UEA. In addition to This Line is not for Turning (2011), the anthology of contemporary British prose poetry which Pascale Petit praised as ‘ground-breaking’, she has edited British Prose Poetry: The Poems without Lines (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She is widely anthologised in the UK and her prose poetry and reviews have been featured UK-wide and internationally in Westerly, Fortnightly Review, Envoi, Aesthetica, Magma and Poetry London. Jane’s collections with Cinnamon Press include Speaking Without Tongues (2010) The Shared Surface (2013) and The Chalk Butterfly (2022). The Sound of Feet Passing, her 4th collection is about climate change and childhood. Cassandra Atherton, award-winning Australian prose poet and international expert and critic of the form describes Jane as ‘the fairy godmother of prose poetry.’
Clare Pollard
Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978. Her first collection of poetry The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe, 1998) was written while she was still at school, and received an Eric Gregory award. Her fourth collection Changeling (Bloodaxe, 2011) is a Poetry Book Society recommendation. Clare’s first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, and has since been performed at the Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich. In 2012 she co-wrote the radio play Surface to Air with W.N. Herbert for BBC Radio 4.
Clare supports herself by working as a journalist, editor, teacher and translator. She has written and presented two documentaries for television and one for radio My Male Muse (2007), which was a BBC Radio 4 pick of the year. She has been managing editor of the Idler, has edited issues of Magma poetry magazine, and co-edited an anthology with James Byrne entitled Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century.
Clare teaches regularly for the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry School and the City Literary Institute. Her interest in the process of translation has led to her involvement in numerous translation projects, including co-translating Poems by Caasha Lul Mohamud Yusuf (Poetry Translation Centre, 2012) and writing a new version of Ovid’s Heroines (Bloodaxe, 2013). Clare lives in south London with her husband and son, and blogs regularly about her life as a poet.
Rendani Ranwashe
Rendani is a British-South African artist based in South London. She says "I contain a deep yearning for connection, healing, and justice. When I ponder, I often ponder through poetry. Those times when I have tried unsuccessfully to silence my thoughts through meditation, the voice that has remained is poetry. With a mind devoid of images and full of words, I write to process, validate, reimagine, and release." Her Instagram handle is @rendivisionary