Our 33rd lunchtime reading with Sarah Wedderburn, Hélène Demetriades, David Spittle and Dillon Jaxx

Hélène Demetriades is a poet and psychotherapist living in South Devon. She was once an actor. Her debut collection, ‘The Plumb Line’ was joint winner of the Hedgehog Press Full Fat Poetry Collection Competition 2020. The title comes from a dream conversation she had with her father.

Sarah Wedderburn’s publishing credits include Magma, MsLexia, Oxford Poetry, PAIN, PN Review, Poems in Which and The New European. Her work has appeared in Culture Matters’ anthologies Witches, Warriors, Workers (2020) and Cry of the Poor (2021), and in Yvonne Reddick's Poetry, Grief and Healing (2020). She holds a Poetry School MA, works as an arts writer, and lives in rural East Kent.

David Spittle is a poet, filmmaker, and essayist. His first full collection, All Particles and Waves, was published by Black Herald Press (2020), following the pamphlet B O X (HVTN, 2018). For the last decade, he has been running a series of interviews with poets on film and filmmakers on poetry; it has now been published as a book, Light Glyphs (Broken Sleep, 2020). Spittle’s first short film, Light Noise, was funded and broadcast by the BBC – now available to watch on iPlayer. The following year, he was commissioned to make an experimental documentary by the Austrian Cultural Forum on poetry in the pandemic, Where Is Everyone Austria. He has also written three operas and, in 2014, was commissioned by Bergen National Opera to write a song-cycle which has since been performed internationally. Spittle holds a Literature PhD on the poetry of John Ashbery and Surrealism. He continues independent research across Poetry, Film, and Noise. dspittle.com

Dillon Jaxx is a queer writer living in Sussex.Shortlisted for the Nine Arches Primers programme 2021. Work coming out in Poetry Wales and Spoonie press Disabled through chronic illness, they write about grief, loss, identity and life that happens while no one’s looking.