Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a cross art form practitioner, a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of the Midnight Run — an international, arts-filled, night-time, playful, urban, walking experience. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and a designer at White Space Creative Agency.  Across his work, Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in which he also tries to mix the old with the new: traditional african storytelling with contemporary poetry, pencil with pixel, texture with vector images. His poetry is published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches & several plays by Oberon.

 

 

 

Helen Calcutt was born in the Black Country (1988) and now lives in Birmingham. Her  work appears in over forty journals, including Poetry Scotland, Evoi, The London Magazine, and The Times Literary Supplement. Her pamphlet collection ‘Sudden rainfall’  was shortlisted for the PBS Pamphlet Choice Award, and in 2016 became a Waterstones best-selling collection. She has taken on writing residences with The National Trust, and Loughborough University, where she is also a visiting lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing. Helen works as a mentor and writing tutor for the likes of Andrew Motion’s Poetry By Heart, N.A.W.E, and Writing West Midlands. Her first full-length book of poems ‘Unable Mother‘, described as both a ‘violent and tender grapple with our cosy notions of motherhood’ will be published by V Press in 2018. Helen is also a professional dance artist and choreographer.