PoetCasting

Ian Parks was born in 1959 and was one of the National Poetry Society New Poets in 1996. His first collection, which received a Yorkshire Arts Award, was published in 1986. He was made a Hawthornden Fellow in 1991 and received a Traveling Fellowship to the USA in 1994.

His collections include A Climb Through Altered Landscapes (1998), Shell Island (2006) and The Cage (2009). His most recent collection, Love Poems 1979-2009 was published in 2010 by Flux Gallery Press, and a pamphlet, The Paston Letter was published by Rack Press. His poems have appeared in Poetry Review, The Observer, The Independent on Sunday, The London Magazine, The Liberal, Stand and Tears in the Fence. He taught creative writing at the University of Leeds until 2008 and now writes full time.

Read ‘The Exile’s House’ (.pdf, Right click and save target as)

Read ‘A Last Love Poem’ (.pdf, Right click and save target as)

Read ‘Jazz Train’ (.pdf, Right click and save target as)

Read ‘Over The Top’ (.pdf, Right click and save target as)
Read ‘Lazarus’ (.pdf, Right click and save target as)

Julia Copus was born in London in 1969, within spitting distance of the Old Vic theatre, and is a poet, teacher and radio dramatist. She grew up in Hampshire, the only girl of four children. Her first collection The Shuttered Eye (Bloodaxe) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and her second, In Defence of Adultery, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In 2003 she won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition with ‘Breaking the Rule’.

Brilliant Writing Tips for Students (Palgrave Macmillan) was published in 2009, and The Landlord’s Cat, a songbook for children, which was written in collaboration with her brother, Antony Copus, will appear in 2010.

She tutors regularly for the Arvon Foundation and The Poetry School, and is an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter.

Altered Land is a multimedia collaboration between PoetCasting and documentary photographer Ernest Goh. The sequence of photographs were taken in Aceh, Indonesia after it was devastated by tsunami waves on December 26th 2004. This four-year long documentary project charts Aceh’s road to recovery from 2004 to 2008. PoetCasting invited submissions of poems inspired or informed by these evocative photographs. The winner was Roy Bainton’s powerful ‘Against Those Gods’, with Emma Lee’s ‘Hope in tones of monochrome’ and DA Prince’s ‘Trespass’ both highly commended. View the sequence in full here.

Roy Bainton was born in Hull in 1943. He spent 7 years in the Merchant Navy, sailing around the world on a series of old tramp vessels. Roy is the author of 12 books. These include Honoured By Strangers, a World War 1 naval biography, The Long Patrol, the story of the British in Germany during the Cold War, and A Brief History of 1917: Russia’s Year of Revolution. His poetry and prose has been featured on BBC Radio 4 and includes Iron In The Blood, co-authored with the poet and playwright Kevin Fegan.

His first novel, The Scrap Run (2008) was written with the support of an Arts Council England. In addition to history, fiction, journalism and poetry he works extensively in the music industry. He has written souvenir tour brochures for major concert tours, for clients including B.B. King, Mark Knopfler, Smokey Robinson, Tony Christie, The Temptations, The Four Tops, and many more. He is also the author of the 1994 history of British R&B, Talk To Me Baby. Roy is also President of the Nottingham Writers Club.

Download poems and photographs in ebook format (.pdf - right click, save target as)

Altered Land is a multimedia collaboration between PoetCasting and documentary photographer Ernest Goh. The sequence of photographs were taken in Aceh, Indonesia after it was devastated by tsunami waves on December 26th 2004. This four-year long documentary project charts Aceh’s road to recovery from 2004 to 2008. PoetCasting invited submissions of poems inspired or informed by these evocative photographs. The winner was Roy Bainton’s powerful ‘Against These Gods’, with Emma Lee’s ‘Hope in tones of monochrome’ and DA Prince’s ‘Trespass’ both highly commended. View the sequence in full here.

D A Prince was born and brought up in Coalville, Leicestershire, although her family roots were in Wales. Publication in magazines such as Staple, Smiths Knoll, Poetry Nottingham brought her to the attention of Pikestaff Press, who published two pamphlets  -  Undoing Time (1998), and Keeping in Touch (2002). Nearly the Happy Hour, her first full-length collection, was published by HappenStance Press in 2008.

She reviews for South, Sphinx and Staple, and is a member of SoundsWrite, the Leicester-based poetry group for women that draws members from across the Midlands. She has also read four poems for PoetCasting.

Download poems and photographs in ebook format (.pdf - right click, save target as)

Altered Land is a multimedia collaboration between PoetCasting and documentary photographer Ernest Goh. The sequence of photographs were taken in Aceh, Indonesia after it was devastated by tsunami waves on December 26th 2004. This four-year long documentary project charts Aceh’s road to recovery from 2004 to 2008. PoetCasting invited submissions of poems inspired or informed by these evocative photographs. The winner was Roy Bainton’s powerful ‘Against Those Gods’, with Emma Lee’s ‘Hope in tones of monochrome’ and DA Prince’s ‘Trespass’ both highly commended. View the sequence in full here.

Emma Lee’s stories and poems are widely published, appearing in The Interpreter’s House, Staple and Orbis.  Her poetry collection, Yellow Torchlight and the Blues is available from Original Plus (UK) and novel Bitter Fame via http://www.bitterfame.webs.com.  She blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com.  A knee injury forced her out of the ice-rink and she found herself hanging around with bands until she swapped beer-sticky floors for the comforts of cinemas.  She lives in Leicester with her husband and daughter.

Download poems and photographs in ebook format (.pdf - right click, save target as)

Siobhan Campbell was born in Dublin. She spent a number of years in New York and San Francisco and worked as Director of Wolfhound Press before joining Faculty at Kingston University in London where she works as Course Leader of the MA and MFA in Creative Writing.

Her work has appeared widely in the USA and UK including in Crab Orchard Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Agenda, Magma and Wasafiri. She has won awards in the National Poetry Competition and in the Troubadour, Mslexia and Wigtown International competitions. That Water Speaks in Tongues (Templar Poetry) was short listed for the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2009. Her work is anthologised in Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets Writing in English (Seren), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (NYU Press) and Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010).

Publications include reviews and criticism in Agenda, The Independent, Poetry Ireland Review and The Stinging Fly.

Her collections of poetry are The Permanent Wave and The Cold that Burns (Blackstaff Press), That Water Speaks in Tongues (Templar), Darwin Among the Machines (Rack Press) and her latest book, Cross-Talk (Seren, 2009).

Pádraig Ó Tuama is originally from Cork, but has lived and worked in Belfast for many years. Pádraig has worked as a community poet for a number of Corrymeela’s storytelling projects, writing poems about people’s experiences of Ireland and conflict. He likes poems that rhyme and poems with rhythm. Sometimes they have both. He has a new book coming out this winter and some of his poetry can be found at www.corkman.tumblr.com

This audio was recorded live at Outburst: A Queer Arts Festival in November 2009. Outburst was set up in 2006, and is now an annual multi-discipline festival, celebrating and showcasing LGBT creativity in Northern Ireland. Hear the other poets who read on the night; Paula Cunningham, Vincent Creelan and Hayley Fox-Roberts.

Paula Cunningham was born in Omagh, County Tyrone. She currently lives in Belfast. Paula’s poems have been widely anthologised in Ireland and beyond, appearing in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vol. 5. and The New Irish Poets.

Her book, A Dog Called Chance, was published by Smith Doorstop in 1999. She has also written plays for Tinderbox and BBC Radio 4, and a short story appeared in Faber’s Best New Irish Short Stories 2004-5.

This audio was recorded live at Outburst: A Queer Arts Festival in November 2009. Outburst was set up in 2006, and is now an annual multi-discipline festival, celebrating and showcasing LGBT creativity in Northern Ireland. Hear the other poets who read on the night; Pádraig Ó Tuama, Vincent Creelan and Hayley Fox-Roberts.

Vincent Creelan recently appeared on the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley’s One & Other project, where he read his poetry. He also appeared on the One & Other website as a guest blogger. He is interested in environmental issues, policing, and LGBT issues. He is a very proud father, sci fi fan, and chairperson of The Rainbow Project, an organisation supporting gay and bisexual men in Northern Ireland.

This audio was recorded live at Outburst: A Queer Arts Festival in November 2009. Outburst was set up in 2006, and is now an annual multi-discipline festival, celebrating and showcasing LGBT creativity in Northern Ireland. Hear the other poets who read on the night; Paula Cunningham, Pádraig Ó Tuama and Hayley Fox-Roberts.

Hayley Fox-Roberts was born in Liverpool, but currently lives in County Leitrim. She has published two collections, Songs of Lust (Windows Publications,1985) and Nine Muses on a Night Out (Bradshaw Books, 2001). She regularly performs her poetry - a unique blend of lyric poetry, Goddess-worship and polemic rant. Hayley is an occasional journalist.

This audio was recorded live at Outburst: A Queer Arts Festival in November 2009. Outburst was set up in 2006, and is now an annual multi-discipline festival, celebrating and showcasing LGBT creativity in Northern Ireland. Hear the other poets who read on the night; Paula Cunningham, Vincent Creelan and Pádraig Ó Tuama.