Alice I Love You
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Claire Booker lives by the South Downs. Her poems have appeared in publications including Agenda, Magma, Rialto, Spectator and Stand. She is a five-times winner of The Poetry Society Members’ Competition and was long-listed in the National Poetry Competition.
Fourteen and fuelled
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Emma Dandy’s writing explores the fragmentation of identity after trauma. Publication of her debut pamphlet – I Laid Out Knives, Guns and Razors – is forthcoming with Hedgehog Poetry Press. She is a Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Birmingham. Insta: @emmadandypoetry
Under the Mersey
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Maria, from Liverpool, creates the hand-stitched poetry journal, Coast to Coast to Coast, and is writer in residence for Mersey Care NHS Trust, Maria has published six pamphlets -the latest, Subcutaneous, was winner of Lancaster LitFest, March 2025
Void
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Nina Parmenter’s first collection “Split, Twist, Apocalypse” was published by Indigo Dreams in 2022. Her pamphlet “Kiss Chase with Darwin” is forthcoming from Broken Sleep in November 2026. Based in Wiltshire, Nina runs the Trowbridge Stanza of the Poetry Society. Insta: @nina.parmenter Bluesky: @ninaparmenter.bsky.social Website: https://www.ninaparmenter.com
Milk
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Jean Atkin’s third full poetry collection ‘High Nowhere’ (IDP, 2023) was nominated for the 2024 Laurel Prize and Coast to Coast to Coast published her winning Individual Poet Journal in 2025. Her poetry has won competitions, been commissioned, anthologised, and featured on BBC Radio 4. Since 2010 Jean has worked as a poet in education and community.
Smoke
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John lives in Brixton, South London. He is Trustee of the Survivors’ Poetry collective. His poems have been/will be published in (among others) The Madrid Review, Iamb, After…, Full House Literary, Snow lit rev, Atrium, Broken Spine and Asylum. https://johnadlampoems.substack.com https://bsky.app/profile/johnadlam.bsky.social
Late
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James McDermott’s collections include ‘Father Myself’ and ‘Wild Life’, published by Nine Arches Press. James’s poems have been published in journals including Poetry Wales, The North, Magma, Butcher’s Dog and Fourteen Poems. He lectures in creative writing at UEA.
Papaya Salad
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Edinburgh-based Mark Spencer Turner writes in English, Polari, and Scottish Gaelic. Polaris won a National Gaelic Award and was shortlisted for Scottish Poetry Book of the Year. He is the only winner of both Wigtown Gaelic and International Poetry Prizes. MarcasMac.scot
the yellow bird
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In 2023, Warren placed first for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize. Warren is author of the pamphlet Fruit Knife Autopsy with Green Bottle Press. To date, Warren has been published in The Frogmore Papers, Magma, Orbis, Poetry Ireland, and Stand.
Our featured publication for May and June is Crossing Paths by Jean Atkin and Richard Skinner, published by Black Cat Poetry Press.
“Written between December 2023 and July 2024, Crossing Paths is a collaboration between poets Jean Atkin and Richard Skinner, both keen walkers, both of whose work is informed by the natural world and the human experience of exploring it. The walks in the collection were taken separately, and in many different locations. They would each pass a poem across, then write a new poem in response.
The poems map landscapes from the Coast to Coast walk across northern England to the Berwyn mountains of Powys; from the ‘rock-hop tussock-clamber’ of Seefin in Cork to ‘the woollen stockings / of Kirkby Stephen’; from ‘paths scrambled to a spirit level’ near Aberfoyle to Cheshire, where you may ‘Wish now on Whistlebitch, for the lost wells, the dew ponds’. Crossing Paths is a book of poems about walking, place, nomenclature and nature.“
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The Providences of Langstrothdale Chase
Jean Atkin
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Space and Seefin
Jean Atkin
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Cloud Inversion Over Aberfoyle
Richard Skinner
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Ingleby Greenhow
Richard Skinner
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Jean Atkin walks with a notebook in her pocket, and is easily tempted away from the signposted path. Her third full poetry collection ‘High Nowhere’ (IDP, 2023) was nominated for the 2024 Laurel Prize and Coast to Coast to Coast published her winning Individual Poet Journal in 2025. She has previously published another eight poetry books, often dealing with place, nature and story. Her poetry has won competitions, been commissioned, anthologised, and featured on BBC Radio 4. Since 2010 Jean has worked as a poet in education and community, often in collaboration with other artists.
Richard Skinner is a walker and a writer, often at the same time. He has climbed the Wainwrights in the Lakes, the Cuillins on the Isle of Skye and Mont Blanc. In 2016, he switched to long distance walking and, since then, he has completed more than 20 long distance walks in the UK, including the West Highland Way, the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast. Richard has published six books of poems. He is Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy and runs poetry courses for the Arvon Foundation and Sarum College.
Copies of Crossing Paths are available to purchase from the Black Cat Poetry Press website, here. Signed copies may be purchased directly from Jean or Richard.
atriumpoetry.com 