Ian Seed‘s full-length collections of poetry and prose poetry include Night Window (Shearsman, 2024), The Underground Cabaret (Shearsman, 2020), Operations of Water (Knives, Forks & Spoons Press, 2020), and New York Hotel (Shearsman 2018), which was nominated by Mark Ford as a TLS Book of the Year.

His most recent chapbook is My Outsize Hank Williams Cowboy Hat, with artwork by Lupo Sol (Sacred Parasite Press, 2025).

Ian’s new collection, Forgetfulness, is forthcoming from Shearsman in early 2026.

Translations include: The Dice Cup (Wakefield Press, US, 2023), from the French of Max Jacob, The River Which Sleep Has Told Me (Fortnightly Review Odd Volumes, 2022), from the Italian of Ivano Fermini, and Bitter Grass (Shearsman, 2016), from the Italian of Gëzim Hajdari.

According to John Ashbery, writing in 2011, ‘the mystery and sadness of empty rooms, chance encounters in the street, trains traveling through a landscape of snow become magical in Ian Seed’s poems.’ More information available at www.ianseed.co.uk

Claire Crowther has published six collections of poetry, including her current collection Real Lear, New & Selected Poems, and one collection of essays and interviews, all with Shearsman. Stretch of Closures was shortlisted for the Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection and Solar Cruise was awarded a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her poems have appeared in Bad Lilies, Fortnightly Review, Obsessed with Pipework, London Review of Books, Poetry Review, The North, TLS, and many other publications. She teaches on Oxford University’s Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing and is Poet in Residence at Frome Museum for 2025. She is Deputy / Reviews Editor of Long Poem Magazine. Her work has been recorded for the Poetry Archive. Luke Kennard has said of her work: ‘For me, [Claire Crowther’s] work sits with the Modernists in its uncompromising ambition, commitment to experiment and dignity of focus, but her voice is consistently contemporary, poised and original.’

What makes a poem catch an editor’s eye?
Three editors and poetry curators share in-depth insights and read some of their own work, with the opportunity for Q&A from the audience.
Do join us for what will be a fascinating discussion at the start of a New Year. We’re not offering open mic slots on this event but they’ll be back in February!

Dawn Gorman is a prize-winning poet, editor and broadcaster, with a mission to do what she can to enable others to write, perform and publish their work. She runs weekly in-person creative writing workshops (and has published two poetry-photography anthologies for her participants); runs monthly poetry workshops by email; mentors writers; offers guest poet and open mic slots on The Poetry Place on West Wilts Radio, which she devises, presents and co-produces, and she publishes poets in Caduceus Journal, where she is poetry editor. She also works with older people in residential settings, helping them write their life memories.

Her own poetry publications include The Bird Room, a poetry/photography collaboration with her late father (Hedgehog, 2023). In 2020, she co-wrote the Pushcart Prize-nominated Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird with poet Rosie Jackson (Hedgehog Poetry Press), while Instead, Let Us Say (Dempsey & Windle, 2019), won the Brian Dempsey Award. She is widely published in poetry journals and anthologies, and has performed her work in New York, Paris, at Edinburgh Fringe and across the UK.

www.dawngorman.co.uk

Julia Deakin was born in Nuneaton The Half-Mile-High Club (2007) was a Poetry Business Competition winner and her full-length collections Without a Dog (Graft Poetry, 2008), Eleven Wonders (Graft Poetry, 2011) and Sleepless (Valley Press, 2018) impressed Anne Stevenson, Michael Symmons Roberts, Simon Armitage and Gillian Clarke respectively. She has read twice on the BBC’s Poetry Please and won recent first prizes in Poetry Archive Worldview 2022 and 2024. She edits Pennine Platform magazine.

Sharon Black is from Glasgow and lives in a remote valley of the Cévennes mountains. In 2025 she has won The Poetry Society’s inaugural Tobias Hill Prize, and 1st prizes in the Kent & Sussex Open Poetry Competition, Wells Open Poetry Competition and The Frogmore Poetry Prize. She has published 4 full collections of poetry, her latest ‘The Last Woman Born on the Island’ (Vagabond Voices, 2022), with her next collection due out with Vagabond Voices in spring 2026. She is editor of Pindrop Press.

www.sharonblack.co.uk