On Poetry

I’m a performance poet with three published collections of poetry and the author of a novel. My poetry has been anthologised by Bloodaxe, Nine Arches and the Emma Press among others, and for the past year, I’ve hosted the LGBT+ radio show Out in South London on Resonance FM, showcasing gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans authors, musicians, comedians and other creatives like me.

Recent notable gigs include four times at Glastonbury on the Poetry & Words Stage, Women of the World (WOW) Festival at the South Bank Centre and headlining a national tour with Hammer and Tongue. I’m a Literary Death Match champion, Spread the Word LGBT Hero and Diversity Role Model. I’m also a freelance editor, Chair of Poetry London and the Pride Network at Hachette UK.

I’ve taught workshops for the National Portrait Gallery and various schools and colleges around the UK, and I lecture on creative writing and careers at Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education. My first love is still spoken word, but I also love radio and presenting and organising real-time and virtual events.

Vanessa Kisuule is a writer and performer based in Bristol. She has won over ten slam titles including The Roundhouse Slam 2014, Hammer and Tongue National Slam 2014 and the Nuoryican Poetry Slam. She has been featured on BBC iPlayer, Radio 1, and Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Blue Peter, Don't Flop and TEDx in Vienna. She has appeared at an array of literary and music festivals and was Glastonbury Festival's Resident Poet in 2019.  She has been invited to perform all over the world from Belgium to Brazil to Bangladesh.

Her poem on the historic toppling of Edward Colston's statue 'Hollow' gained over 600,000 views on Twitter in three days. She has two poetry collections published by Burning Eye Books and her work was Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry Prize Anthology 2019. She has written for publications including The Guardian, NME and Lonely Planet and has publication credits in pending anthologies with Canongate, Orion and Penguin Random House. She has worked extensively in theatre with Bristol Old Vic, Kneehigh Theatre and Pentabus and her Arts Council supported show ‘SEXY’ toured nationally in 2017. She was the Bristol City Poet for 2018 - 2020 and will be co-tutor for Southbank Centre’s first ever Poetry Collective alongside Will Harris. She is currently working on an essay collection and her debut novel.

https://www.vanessakisuule.com/

Amy Acre is a poet and editor, born in London and living in Nottingham. Her debut collection, Mothersong (Bloomsbury, 2023) was shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and was named a Book of the Year in The Telegraph, The Financial Times and California Review of Books. She runs award-winning indie publisher, Bad Betty Press.

London-born, Nottingham-based, Bad Betty Press was set up in 2017 by Amy Acre and Jake Wild Hall with the aim of showcasing exciting and risk-taking poetry, supporting poets’ artistic development and celebrating stories less often told. 

Amy is the author of pamphlets, And They Are Covered in Gold Light (Bad Betty, 2019) and Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads (Flipped Eye, 2015), both selected as a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She’s written for Radio 4 and featured on The Last Dinosaur’s 2020 track, ‘In The Belly of a Whale’.

Jess Chandler founded Prototype in 2019. She was a co-founder of Test Centre, which ran from 2011 to 2018, publishing innovative works of poetry and fiction. She also co-runs, with Gareth Evans, the imprint House Sparrow Press. She has worked as an editor at Reaktion Books, and used to work as a researcher and producer on factual television programmes. She was the Digital Editor of Poetry London for six years. Jess has extensive experience editing and publishing a range of books, from fiction and poetry to illustrated art books, literary biography, history and philosophy, specialising in poetry and hybrid, multidisciplinary works. Jess has been invited to give talks and seminars at institutions including Glasgow School of Art, Birkbeck and the Royal College of Art, and has been a tutor at the Poetry School. She is also a cellist, and lives in London with her partner and their two young children.

Prototype is a publisher of fiction, poetry, anthologies and interdisciplinary projects. With an emphasis on producing unique and beautiful books, we are committed to championing the work of new voices in free-form contemporary literature.

Prototype is committed to creating new possibilities in the publishing of fiction and poetry through a flexible, interdisciplinary approach. Each publication is unique in its form and presentation, and the aesthetic of each object is considered critical to its production.

Through the discovery of high quality work across genres, Prototype strives to increase audiences for experimental writing, as the home for writers and artists whose work requires a creative vision not offered by mainstream literary publishers.

Olivia Davies grew up in Bristol and studied Philosophy and English Literature in Edinburgh before teaching English to secondary school students in Preston.  Her first publishing role was at ‘A’ Literary Agency in Tbilisi. She started working at United Agents in 2020.

She is open to submissions of upmarket, literary and commercial fiction, and non-fiction that contains a strong narrative element.

She welcomes all form and genre, as long as the writing is surprising and the plot considered, whether that be, for example, a dysfunctional family saga, grounded speculative story, heart-wrenching romance or historical retelling.

She particularly loves stories that are dark and surreal, strange and magical, with ambitious timelines and multiple POV’s, and is inspired by writers like Emily St John Mandel, Leonora Carrington, Toni Morrison and Shirley Jackson. 

Favourite recent reads: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead / Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor / Still Life by Sarah Winman / In Ascension by Martin MacInnes / You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi / The Bee Sting by Paul Murray / Life After Life by Kate Atkinson / Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly