Robert Nisbet, a Welsh writer, was an associate lecturer in creative writing at Trinity College, Carmarthen, where he also worked as adjunct professor for the Central College of Iowa. His poems appear in Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes (Prolebooks, 2017).
Our featured publication for November and December is Not Enough Rage by Gram Joel Davies, published by V. Press.
‘It’s rare for me to recognise, and feel kinship for, a lot of contemporary poetry. I recognise and feel kinship with this. Not Enough Rage is like a series of controlled explosions. Trembling houses. A burning voice. Experience dismantled and sewn back together with glowing needles and a mouth full of stars.’ Bobby Parker
‘Like a Dylan Thomas of the age of mental illness, Gram Joel Davies leaps and flies through the world with dark exuberance. These are speakable poems, full of love for unlovable places and impossible people. In touch with but not tied to rap’s rhymes and rhythms, this collection, for me, shifts the modern world into the painful focus of real poetry.‘ Peter Oswald
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Gram Joel Davies grew up in a council house in the Westcountry. Working-class and university-educated, he is enthusiastic about psychotherapy and works as a counsellor in private practice. His poetry concerns itself with an experience of being (through rural and urban landscapes) and with belonging (in relationships marked by emotional disturbance). Publications have appeared over the decades in Magma, The Moth, Poetry Wales, The Centrifugal Eye and many other places. His debut collection, Bolt Down This Earth (2017), is also published by V. Press. Twitter: @g_r_a_m_j_d
Copies of Not Enough Rage can be purchased from the V. Press website, here.
Caspar Bryant is a poet from West Cornwall. Caspar’s work can be found in SPAM, Alchemy Spoon, And Other Poems, Propel Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Broken Sleep’s anthology of Cornish poets, among others.
Ruth Stacey’s first poetry collection Queen, Jewel, Mistress was published by Eyewear Publishing, 2015, and her second full collection, I, Ursula, was published in January 2020 by V. Press Poetry. Pamphlets include, Inheritance, published by Mothers Milk Books in 2017. A duet with Katy Wareham Morris, the collection explores 19th century experience of motherhood, contrasted with a 21st century mother’s voice. Inheritance won Best Collaborative Work at the 2018 Saboteur Awards. Three pamphlets with Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. A poetic memoir, How to Wear Grunge, was published in 2018. Viola the Virgin Queen, illustrated by Desdemona McCannon, was published in 2020, and her latest work, The Dark Room: Letters to Krista, a collaboration with the American photographer Krista Kay, was published in 2021. Stacey is currently writing an imagined memoir of the tarot artist Pamela Colman Smith, as part of her PhD study.
Corinna Board teaches English as an additional language in Oxford. Her poetry has appeared in Spelt, Anthropocene, The Alchemy Spoon and elsewhere. Her debut pamphlet will be published this year by The Black Cat Poetry Press.
Lisa Falshaw lives in West Yorkshire, but dreams of living in Kefalonia. She has several micro poems published in Black Bough anthologies. She has had poems placed in several competitions and won the Wakefield postcode prize in The Red Shed competition in 2021.
Naoise Gale is a poet from Yorkshire. She was the winner of the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2022, and her debut pamphletAfter the Flood Comes the Apologiesis published with Nine Pens. Naoise is currently studying an MA at UEA.
Sophia Argyris was born in Belgium to an English and Greek family, grew up mostly in Scotland, and now lives in England. Her work has been published in Ink Sweat & Tears, Magma, Spelt, and Under the Radar amongst others.
Ann Heath lives in York. She has been published in Aesthetica and Dreamcatcher. She previously won the local writer’s prize in the Yorkmix Poetry Competition.