Alison Gibb is a British poet-artist. Originally trained in visual art, she began working in poetry in 2009. Her publications include I am knot…a Poster in Pieces of Power (Ambergris Editions, 2016), A Vase (Kni ves, Forks and Spoons Press, 2017), Pomegranates In the Oak CD (ZimZalla, 2013) and Silent Diagrams (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2013). She has performed poetry across the UK including PolyPLY, The Other Room and the Cardiff Poetry Experiment and was a resident at the Banff Arts Centre, Canada in 2013.

HARIS PSARRAS

Haris Psarras was born in Athens, Greece. He is a Fellow of Law at St. Catharine College, Cambridge. Haris has published five poetry books (in Greek). Translations of his poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in the UK, the US, France, Germany, Romania and Slovenia.

JAMES COGHILL

James Coghill is an ecopoet subsisting in the vast bracket of 'getting there' with a sustained interest in the lyric sequence, animal studies, and Swedish language and culture. With poems published in The Rialto, Blackbox Manifold, and Lighthouse, his first pamphlet is forthcoming. He is currently working on a sequence responding to the work of late Tang dynasty poet Meng Chiao.

LACHLAN MACKINNON

Lachlan Mackinnon was born in Aberdeen and educated in England at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford. He retired after 30 years’ teaching and is now a freelance writer. He is the author of a few modern poetry books, and has written a biography of the first woman to win the Prix Goncourt, Elsa Triolet. He is reviewed widely in the national and literary press. He has written five poetry books, of which the most recent is Doves (Faber, 2017). In 2011 he received the Cholmondeley award. He lives in Ely with his wife, the poet Wendy Cope.

LI HAIZHOU

Li Haizhou is a poet and writer from China. He was born in the mountainous city of Chongqing in 1973. He started writing when he was 16 years old. His main works include the poetry anthology The Dance on the Harp, A Lonely King, and the novel Snicker. He has won several literature awards. In addition, his works have been translated into multiple languages. Now Haizhou lives in Chongqing and serves as the editor-in-chief of Culture of Geography.

LIANG PING

Liang Ping is a Chinese contemporary poet and writer. Currently he is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, Deputy Director of the Poetry Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, Vice Chairman of the Writers Association of Sichuan Province and Chairman of the Chengdu Federation of Literary and Art Circles. He has published 10 poetry collections, including Rejecting Gentleness, Liang Ping's Poem Anthology, Ba and Shu: Two Duets, Thirty Years in the East River, Story of Wenchuan and Family Tree, comments on the poetry The Posture of Reading, an essay collection The Master Expressing by the Bank of the Stream and a long novel Chaotianmen. His poetry works have been translated into English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Bulgarian, Russian and other languages. He won the Special Award for his Chinese books, Guo Moruo Poetry Prize of the Chinese Writers, Bashu Literary Award of Sichuan Province and other awards.

LUCY HAMILTON

Lucy Hamilton co-edits Long Poem Magazine. Her collection of prose poems, Stalker (Shearsman 2012), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was chosen as a core set book on a new ‘Creative Writing Life Writing’ course at the University of Chester 2016-2017. Her next collection is due from Shearsman in 2018. Work-in-progress explores her extended family - history, geography, mythology - through photographic - collages and the poems written about them afterwards. Recent poetry and artwork have appeared in Artemis, Long Exposure, Ink, Sweat & Tears and The Wolf.

RICHARD BERENGARTEN

Richard Berengarten (born in London in 1943) is a well-known British and international poet. A Bye-Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, he has published over 25 books and received many poetry awards, and his poetry has been translated into more than 100 languages. Richard Berengarten has had many recent visits to China, and was one of the co-ordinators of the first Cambridge Xu Zhimo Poetry & Art Festival (2015).

STEPHEN WATTS

Stephen Watts is a poet, translator and editor. The most recent books of his own poetry are Ancient Sunlight (2014) and Republic of Dogs/Republic of Birds (2016) with The Language of It forthcoming. Recent translations include the Iraqi poet Adnan al-Sayegh’s Pages From the Biography of An Exile (2016) and the Syrian poet Golan Haji’s Tree Whose Name I Don’t Know (2017). He has cultural roots in the Swiss-Italian Alps and the north of Scotland and has lived in London’s Whitechapel for the past 40 years. The interactions of place and memory – home and exile – have a vital role in his writing.

TIMOTHY ADÈS

Timothy Adès, a rhyming translator-poet, has published almost 1,000 poems in French, Spanish, German and Greek, including over 100 sonnets. Many are on his website, or on brindinpress.com. His books in French are inspired by Jean Cassou and Robert Desnos and Victor Hugo; he has awards for these poets and for the Mexican Alfonso Reyes, and a book in Spanish inspired by the Venezuelan poet Alberto Arvelo Torrealba. Other favourites are Brecht, Sikelianós, Ricarda Huch and Nerval. He rewrote Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets without using the letter ‘E’, making Bard’s love-life easier to follow. He runs an occasional bookstall where he distributes translated poetry.

WENDY COPE

Wendy Cope OBE read history at Oxford and later worked as a teacher in London. She has been freelancing since the publication of her first book, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, in 1986. Her fifth collection of poems, Anecdotal Evidence, was published this year. She has also written for children and edited several anthologies. A volume of her prose pieces, Life, Love and The Archers, appeared in 2014. She lives in Ely with her husband, the poet Lachlan Mackinnon.

XIANG YIXIAN

Xiang Yixian was born in 1963 in Sichuan Wanyuan. Now, he lives in Chengdu and is a Professor at Sichuan University. His translations include Poets Beyond Jianghu, Mass Tang Poetry, Viewing Items, My Confucius, My Pronunciation, The Chronicle of Chinese Carving Art and the long historical drama Legend of Mulan. The poetry won the first Chinese poetry contest of Poetry Newspaper, Tianduo (32nd year of the Sexagenary Cycle) Poetry Award, International Confucius Prize, Chinese Poet of the Year for the Chengdu Commercial News, the first Yang Wanli Poetry Award, Nomination of the Year in the Star Poetry Monthly, Poetry Award in the Li Bai Cup. His works have been collected in a variety of poetry collections both at home and abroad. In the 1980s, with his colleagues he successively established several folk poetry magazines such as: The Dynasty, The Red Flag and Xiang Wang.

XUE YIWEI

Xue Yiwei, BA in Computer Science, MA in English Literature, PhD in Linguistics, is an acclaimed author of twenty books in Chinese, including five novels, six collections of short stories and novellas, and six literary essays. “A maverick in contemporary Chinese literature”, to quote Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award, his works have been translated into English, French, Swedish, German and Italian. Shenzheners, his first work translated into English and released in 2016 has awarded a Blue Metropolis Literary Diversity Prize for a First Publication. Dr Bethune’s Children, a controversial novel, has drawn international attention since its publication in English in 2017.

YANG KE

Yang Ke was born in Guangxi province in 1957. He is a renowned Chinese poet who is now the Vice President of the Writers' Association of Guangdong province and a state first rate writer and editor. He is amongst the third generation of China’s powerful poets and one of the representative poets of folk writings. A large number of his works including poems, reviews, essays and novels are published in many of China’s most influential journals such as People’s Literature, Shi Kan, and Chinese Writers, and also many folk journals, overseas journals or Internet journals such as They, Fei Fei, and Yi Hang.

YU YAN

Yu Yan was born in Chongqing in 1967 and now lives in Beijing. He started writing poems in the 1980s and was a representative poet for college students in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he stopped writing. Then, in 2014, he resumed writing. He has published hundreds of works in well-known literary publications, including People's Literature, Chinese Writers, Shikan, The Star Poetry Monthly, Zhongshan Literary Bimonthly and Writer Magazine. He has published the poetry collection of Criticism and Self-Criticism. His works have been selected and included within several poetry anthologies. He has won the title of the 2016 Chinese Poets of the Year in Chengdu Commercial News and received the award of The Grand Poet of the Year in the first Caotang Poet Award ceremony.