Ways into poetry: intensive

Alice Frecknall is a poet, short fiction writer, and fine artist. Her debut poetry collection, Somewhere Something is Burning, is published by Out-Spoken Press (2021). Her writing has been widely anthologised, including in The London Magazine, The Stinging Fly, berlin lit, And Other Poems, bath magg, fourteen poems, and Butcher’s Dog, and was most recently shortlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry 2023 and The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2023. Alice has an MA in Creative Writing, is a Roundhouse Poetry Collective alumna, and member of the UniSlam Post-Emerging Cohort.

Writer and visual artist Claire Collison was awarded the Women Poets’ Prize, 2018. Her first novel was a finalist in the Dundee Book Prize, 2005. Her poetry appears in magazines and anthologies, and has been placed in Winchester, Resurgence, and Hippocrates prizes. She has worked as subeditor for MAKE, the magazine of Women’s Art, and Arts Editor for Disability Arts Magazine. Claire was the first MaxLiteracy writer at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and designs engagement resources, including for the Government Art Collection, National Maritime Museum, and Photographers’ Gallery. She has led creative projects within hospitals and schools, and with refugees and asylum seekers, vulnerable adults, elders, and young children. Her recent cross-disciplinary project, Truth Is Beauty was performed in venues across the UK. She is a founder member of Poets for the Planet.

Lawrence Bradby is a writer and teacher. He has worked as a Writing Tutor with the Centre for Continuing Education (University of East Anglia), as Learning Programme Manager for the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, and as a Programme Coordinator for mental well-being charity Inside Out. He has published three poetry pamphlets with Sideline Publications and has had poems in magazines including Smith’s Knoll, The Rialto, PN Review and the Forward Book of Poetry. His poem ‘If Your Faith In Me Should Fail’ was included in the Poetry International biennial festival at the Southbank Centre at an event offering fifty love poems from the last fifty years. With his partner, artist Anna Townley, Lawrence has documented the emotional intensity of family life. This was published as an artists’ book with co-writers Judith Stewart and Frances Williams: An Endless Round of Repetitive Tasks with Operatic Anger and Comic Turns (2014, Sideline Publications). A follow-up, How To Play With MK (2020, MK Gallery publications), turns a two-year family residency with MK Gallery (Milton Keynes) into a series of fictional encounters with a location which is both magical and threatening.

Billie Manning is a widely published poet who has been teaching poetry courses for City Lit for more than 5 years. She is a qualified teacher and currently works as the Learning and Participation Coordinator for the Poetry Society. In her spare time, she enjoys reading poetry, writing poetry, talking about poetry, and occasionally, while falling asleep, thinking of really great lines of poetry, which in the morning turn out to be entirely ludicrous, and not in the good way.