GEORGE SZIRTES

JOANNE LIMBURG

LUCY HAMILTON

STAV POLEG

VENERABLE MASTER YUEZHEN

YANG KE

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 (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).

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.

Stav Poleg’s poetry has been published on both sides of the Atlantic, including in The New Yorker, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review. Her graphic-novel installation Dear Penelope, created with artist Laura Gressani, was acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. She serves on the editorial board of Magma Poetry magazine and teaches for the Poetry School, London.

Joanne Limburg has published three collections of poetry with Bloodaxe, the most recent being The Autistic Alice. Her other books include two memoirs and a novel, A Want of Kindness, based on the life of Queen Anne. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and son.

Born in Hungary in 1948, George Szirtes' first book of poems, The Slant Door (1979) won the Faber Prize. He has published many since then, Reel (2004) winning the T S Eliot Prize, for which he has been twice shortlisted since. Mapping the Delta appeared in 2016. His most recent book is the memoir, The Photographer at Sixteen (2019).

Master Yuezhen was born in 1969 in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. He is currently a director of the Buddhist Association of China, Acting Deputy Director of the China Buddhist Calligraphy & Painting Exchange Base, Deputy Director of the Buddhist Association of Zhejiang Province, Head Monk of Taoguang Temple, Chief Supervisor of Yongfu Temple, Head Monk of Gufangguang Temple on Tiantai Mountain and Chief Editor of Buddhism in Zhejiang and Buddhism in Hangzhou.