Jean Sprackland (Chair)
Jean Sprackland is a poet and writer who lives in London. Tattoos for Mother’s Day (Spike, 1997), was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. Her subsequent poetry collections, all published by Jonathan Cape, are Hard Water (2003), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and for the Whitbread Poetry Award; Tilt (2007), which won the Costa Poetry Award; Sleeping Keys (2013); and Green Noise (2018). Her prose book Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach won the Portico Prize for Non-Fiction in 2012, and These Silent Mansions was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Award in 2021. Her co-translation with Natalia Bukia-Peters of Diana Anphimiadi’s Why I No Longer Write Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books with the Poetry Translation Centre earlier this year. Jean is Professor of Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Hannah Lowe
Hannah Lowe was born in Ilford to an English mother and Jamaican-Chinese father. Her first poetry collection Chick (Bloodaxe, 2013) won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry, and was selected for the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion. Her second collection was Chan (Bloodaxe, 2016). She has also published four chapbooks: The Hitcher (Rialto, 2012); R x (sine wave peak, 2013); Ormonde (Hercules Editions, 2014) and The Neighbourhood (Outspoken Press, 2019). Her third collection, The Kids, (Bloodaxe, 2021) was a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize and won the 2021 Costa Poetry Award 2021 and the Costa Book of the Year. She did her PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and now lectures in Creative Writing at Brunel University. Her latest chapbooks, Rock, Bird, Butterfly and Old Friends, are published by Hercules Editions.
Roger Robinson
Roger Robinson is a writer and performer who lives in Northampton. His poetry pamphlet Suckle (flipped eye, 2009) won the People’s Book Prize and the Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize. His first full poetry collection, The Butterfly Hotel (Peepal Tree Press, 2013), was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize and his second, A Portable Paradise (also Peepal Tree Press, 2019), won the 2019 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2020 Ondaatje Prize. He is an alumni of The Complete Works and was a co-founder of both Spoke Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Kitchen. He has received commissions from The National Trust, London Open House, BBC, The National Portrait Gallery, V&A, INIVA, MK Gallery and Theatre Royal Stratford East. Roger is a sought after internationally acclaimed writer, educator and workshop leader in poetry and has toured extensively with the British Council.