Sonnets and Sarnies

Ralph Dartford was founder of the influential collective A Firm of Poets, who toured nationally with artists such as Hollie McNish, Zena Edwards and Luke Wright amongst other leading spoken word artists. His first pamphlet, Cigarettes, Beer and Love, was published by Ossett Observer Presents in 2013, followed by Recovery Songs, published by Valley Press in 2019, and Hidden Music in October 2021. In 2024, his third collection for Valley Press, House Anthems, will be published to complete a trilogy of themed work. Ralph is the poetry editor at Northern Gravy and is currently studying for a Creative Writing PhD at the University of Huddersfield. For gainful employment, Ralph works for the National Literacy Trust as a Project Manager within the Criminal Justice department.

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.

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.

Kate Fox is a Bradford-born stand up poet and broadcaster. She’s a regular contributor to Radio 3’s spoken word cabaret The Verb, has made two comedy series for Radio 4, been Poet in Residence for the Glastonbury Festival and the Great North Run and completed a PhD in stand up comedy. She is the author of Where There’s Muck There’s Bras: True Stories of the North of England’s Women published by Harper North, and her most recent poetry collection The Oscillations from Nine Arches Press. She is on this year’s Forward Prizes judging panel. She is also a neurodivergent advocate whose latest show Bigger on the Inside explores neurodiversity through the lens of Doctor Who.