Visiting Dumfriesshire in 2026 we park
.
.
Jean Atkin’s third collection ‘High Nowhere’ is available from IDP. She won the Coast to Coast to Coast competition in 2025. ‘Crossing Paths’ (Black Cat Press, 2026) is a collaboration with Richard Skinner. She works as a poet in education and community. www.jeanatkin.com
A Cemetery is a Birthday Party, is a Rave
.
.
Matthew M C Smith is a Welsh poet from Swansea. His work can be read in Poetry Wales, Arachne Press, Ink Sweat and Tears and Atrium. He is writing a monograph on Robert Graves and Wales for the University of Wales Press and runs Black Bough poetry. Matthew is on Twitter, FB, Bluesky and Insta.
A Lesson
.
.
Christopher’s pamphlet, Variety Turns, was published in 2024 by Broken Sleep. His poems have appeared in The Guardian, Anthropocene, The Friday Poem, and anthologies for Andrew Marvell and Peter Didsbury. He lives in Hull with his wife and two sons.
Questions on leaving
.
.
Mary Mulholland is widely published, most recently Magma 94 and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Her debut collection is forthcoming this year from Nine Arches and she has two pamphlets (Broken Sleep and Live Canon). She founded and runs Red Door Poets. www.marymulholland.co.uk
Uprooted
.
.
Paul Waring’s first collection, ‘Muckle Anima’, won the 2022 Dreich Chapbook Competition. ‘Quotidian’, his first pamphlet, was published by Yaffle (2019). He lives on the Wirral. http://www.waringwords.blog
Spell for a Kingfisher
.
.
Lisa Kelly’s The House of the Interpreter (Carcanet) was a PBS Summer 2023 Recommendation. She is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher at the University of Birmingham, exploring the climate crisis through British Sign Language.
On this night
.
.
Pam Thompson is a writer, educator and reviewer based in Leicester. She is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her works include The Japan Quiz (Redbeck Press, 2009) and Show Date and Time, (Smith|Doorstop, 2006). Her collection, Strange Fashion, was published by Pindrop Press in 2017. Pam was winner of the 2023 Paper Swans Pamphlet Competition and her winning pamphlet, Sub/urban Legends (Paper Swans Press) was published in March 2025.
Two Weeks Later
.
.
Jill Abram is autistic, has Jewish heritage and lives with fibromyalgia and Coeliac disease. She grew up in Manchester, travelled the world and now lives in Brixton. Her debut pamphlet, Forgetting My Father, is published by Broken Sleep Books: https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/jill-abram-forgetting-my-father
Littorally
.
.
Julie Hogg is a poet from the North Yorkshire Coast with poems most recently appearing in Atrium Poetry, Black Nore Review and StepAway Magazine. Featured in anthologies by Culture Matters and Seren, ‘A Raven on a Writing Desk’ is available from Dunlin Press.
Isn’t it time you threw that old tray cloth away?
.
.
Heather Wastie’s latest collection – her tenth – ‘Wum Med, Wum Growed’ (2026) is a celebration of Black Country dialect. Other titles include ‘Don’t Oil The Hinges’ – a year as Worcestershire Poet Laureate, and ‘You Are Here’ – a diary of lockdown.
