Jamie Hale is an award-winning poet and facilitator, founder of CRIPtic Arts, and one of the 10 most influential disabled people in the arts (Shaw Trust, 2022-24). Their work explores themes of nature, body and mortality through a 'crip' lens, embedding disability in form and content. They were a Jerwood Poetry Fellow 2021-22, their pamphlet, Shield, was published by Verve Press, and their award-winning show, NOT DYING / Quality of Life is Not a Measurable Outcome has been performed and screened worldwide.

Gayathiri Kamalakanthan is a Tamil poet and performer. They’re interested in how language shapes adolescence and how we might use it to queer the future. Gayathiri runs WORD-BENDERS, a poetry workshop centering trans and queer poets of colour. They won the Disabled Poets Prize 2024 and their novel-in-verse, BAD QUEER, is forthcoming with Faber. Find them at gayathiri.co.uk.
Spoken word trailblazers, the company commissions and produces events, develops artists and runs participation programmes across the country.
It exists to amplify ignored voices, support and champion poets and poetry in performance and challenge expectations of what poetry is and can be.

Since 1982, the organisation has advocated for artistic and social change through the power of performance poetry working with artists including the likes of The Last Poets, Lemn Sissay, Kae Tempest, Charlie Dark, Inua Ellams, Roger Robinson, Joelle Taylor, Yomi Sode, Jean Binta Breeze, Salena Godden and Michael Rosen…amongst many others!

Half poet, half tutor, half clown, Susie lives and works in Sheffield. Her Disabled Poets Prize 2024 winning pamphlet, Nowhere Near As Safe As A Snake In Bed, about living with advanced melanoma and the cutting-edge science used to treat it, was published by Verve Poetry Press in 2024. Skin The Rabbit, a micro-chapbook about growing up ‘strange’ will be out in May 2025 with The Braag. She runs Sub Club for Manchester Poetry Library.