Poetry with a Punch

Peter deGraft-Johnson is the Repeat Beat Poet, a British-born Ghanaian poet, broadcaster, and Hip Hop artist. His debut pamphlet, ‘A Testament To Life And Death’, was released in February 2022, and his poems have been published by Penguin, Bad Betty Press, Magma Poetry, Amnesty International, and exhibited by the U.N during COP26. In 2021 he was a writer-in-residence at the Library of Africa & the African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana, he is a graduate of the Obsidian Foundation for African Poets, and has edited the literary journal Ink, Sweat & Tears. Peter co-founded the Hip Hop & Poetry open mic night Pen-Ting in 2017 and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. Peter is an accomplished and prolific performing artist, appearing multiple times at the Southbank Centre, Royal Albert Hall, and Ronnie Scott’s in London, playing leading UK festivals including WOMAD, Love Supreme, We Out Here, and the Edinburgh Fringe.

Bee Asha is a spoken word artist born and living in Edinburgh. Between Rap and Poetry her work is a cathartic outlet that she uses to explore themes of sexuality, trauma and gender equality, characterised by an openness to talk about her lived experiences. In 2019 Asha starred in the BBC Documentary, Spit it Out and in 2021 she co-founded award winning charity, The Spit it Out Project, released her debut album ‘From Girl to Men’, won the SAMA’s best newcomer award and was featured in YWCA 30 under 30’s. This year Asha has been dubbed by BBC introducing ‘A Creative Powerhouse’, Showcased at New Skool Rules in Rotterdam, shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry award and was highlighted in the List Hot 100. She is continuously working to create sustainable change in our cultures through raising awareness with her creative outlets.

Stefan Mohamed is an award-winning author, performing poet and video maker based in Bristol. He is the author of the Bitter Sixteen Trilogy and Falling Leaves (Salt Publishing), The Marketplace of Ideas (Stewed Rhubarb) and Farewell Tour (Verve Poetry Press). In 2022, his short poetry film ‘it’s all for you’ was long-listed for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry (Poetry in Film category). “Stef writes about things which scare him and does it so brilliantly that he makes me believe that a life without hope wouldn’t be so bad really. He is also extremely polite and turns up on time” – Tom Sastry, Nine Arches Press poet. “Elegant venom and relentless wit” – Bristol 24/7.

Emy.P – Spoken Word artist, Composer and BBC featured poet and Musician born and raised in Essex. On a personal mission to raise awareness and de stigmatize the negative viewpoints surrounding ADHD in adults, her honest writing approach and dark humour delves into the minds of everyday people as well as her own wired brain. Emy featured in the list of TOP 50 Influential Neurodivergent Women 2019. She also won the Undiscovered UK Spoken Word artist award in the same year. Describing herself as ‘Passionate, Chaotic and Scruffy’ Emy’s relatable stories and electric performance are proving to be very popular on the UK Spoken word scene. Emy’s debut album ‘Lights//Chaos//Action’ is available now across all major streaming platforms.

Dr Sanah Ahsan is an award-winning poet, clinical psychologist, presenter, and educator. Her work is centred on compassion, troubling our colonial understandings of mental health, and embracing each other’s madness. Her psychological practice is rooted in liberation and community psychology, drawing on therapeutics, poetics, and post-activism as interconnected practices to support racialised and marginalised people. Her published research explores the deconstruction of whiteness within UK clinical psychology. Some of Sanah’s media work includes presenting a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary exploring the over-medicalisation of young people’s distress and giving a TED Talk entitled ‘Rewriting my story with love and poetry as a queer muslim’. Sanah won the Outspoken Poetry Performance Prize and was recently shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and White Review Poetry Prize. Sanah’s poetry has been published in several anthologies.

Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere. His work has also appeared on BBC Newsnight, BBC Radio 4, ITV, Vice UK, Channel 4 and Sky Arts. His second collection After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize, along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year.
In 2020 he published How To Write It with Merky Books; a practical guide fused with tips and memoir looking at the politics of writing as well as the craft of poetry and fiction along with the wider publishing industry. He was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow of the University of Roehampton. Anthony is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. His poetry collection Heritage Aesthetics was published by Granta in 2022.

Suhrab Sirat is an award-winning Afghan-British exiled poet and former civil society activist. His first pamphlet of English poetry was published by Exiled Writers Ink, and he had previously published four collections of Persian poems in Afghanistan. Some of his poems have been translated into English and published in reputable literary magazines such as The Spectator, Ambit, and Modern Poetry in Translation, and his works have been featured on BBC Radio 4’s “On Form” series. He started writing poems from a young age, and his first collection of poems in Persian was published by the Balkh Independent Writers Association when he was only 19. Aside from his work as a poet, Suhrab is also a journalist who works for the BBC World Service. Born in 1990 in the Balkh Province of Afghanistan, Suhrab was forced to flee his home country in 2013 due to death threats from extremist groups. He eventually gained political asylum in the UK in 2014, and his harrowing journey to safety serves as the basis and inspiration for his pamphlet, “The Eighth Crossing”. His commentaries on literature and his own poetry have been widely published in literary magazines, publications, and websites across Persian-speaking countries. In addition to his literary pursuits, Suhrab represented Afghanistan at the Rio International Literary Festival (FLUPP) in 2013 and has also written lyrics for several well-known Afghan singers, including the first Afghan female rapper, Soosan Firooz. His lyrics often touch on important social issues such as forced migration, patriarchy, religious extremism, and women’s rights. In his journalism career, Suhrab primarily focuses on art, literature, and refugee topics.

Aviva Dautch is a poet, academic and curator who won the Primers prize for emerging voices in 2017. She has a PhD in contemporary poetry and her poems, reviews and literary essays have been published widely, receiving an Authors’ Foundation Award from The Society of Authors in 2018.

Roger Robinson is the recipient of the T.S. Eliot Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize for A Portable Paradise, which was also a New Statesman Book of the Year. He has been commissioned by The National Trust, the V&A, and the National Portrait Gallery, amongst others, and is a co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and Spoke Lab. Recent collaborations include poetic responses to the paintings of Hurvin Anderson, for a forthcoming artist’s monograph, and with Johny Pitts, Home Is Not A Place, fusing poetry and photography in portrayal of and for Black Britain.