Readings from:

clare e. potter is a bilingual poet and performer who studied an MA in Afro-Caribbean literature in Mississippi and taught in New Orleans for a decade. Awards include two Literature Wales writing bursaries, the John Tripp Award for Spoken Poetry, and the Jim Criddle prize for celebrating the Welsh language. clare has translated for the National Poet of Wales, was a Hay Festival Writer at Work, enjoys facilitating community projects and collaborating with jazz musicians. She’s currently researching the creative process for Threshold, a new poetry collection thanks to a Literature Wales bursary. She directed the BBC Wales documentary The Wall and the Mirror. clare e. potter’s spilling histories (Cinnamon Press, 2006) will be followed by A Certain Darkness.

Bi-lingual poet and literary critic Frank Olding writes in Welsh and is a widely published poet and literary critic. His first full collection Mynydd Du (“Black Mountain”) was published in 2012. For six years, he was Welsh-language editor of Poetry Wales and has edited and published anthologies of new Welsh-language poetry and collections of translations. As poetry editor of the Collective Press, he helped to run a small press dedicated to publishing poetry by young and/or promising Welsh poets writing in English. Frank was the chairman of the 2016 National Eisteddfod at Abergavenny and is a member of the Gorsedd of Bards. He regularly translates his poetry into English.

Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwright, author and editor. She has performed across the UK as well as internationally. She has read in a diverse range of venues from the 100 Club, the 02 Arena, the Royal Festival Hall and Ronnie Scott’s to the Royal Court, the Globe, the ICA, Buckingham Palace and various prisons including Pentonville and Holloway. She has published three full collections of poetry: Ska Tissue (2011, Mother Foucault Press), The Woman Who Was Not There (2014, Burning Eye Books), and her latest collection Songs My Enemy Taught Me (2017, Out-Spoken Press).

Iqbal Malik is the Poet In Residence at the Dylan Thomas Birthplace in Swansea. He published his first poetry collection (‘Titans', Balboa Press) in 2015. Iqbal compères and runs the Swansea Poetry Slam that he set up in 2016. In 2019 he set up ‘Frequency House’ - a mixed-arts music label and publishing house that promotes unconventional and unorthodox artists. He also hosts a music and arts podcast (‘The Sullen Art Podcast’). He has been published in several Welsh poetry magazines. He currently works as a Probation Officer in Swansea - a job he's been doing for 16 years. Iqbal is a performance poet who writes on a diverse range of themes, including: politics, social observation and spirituality.