Angbeen Abbas is a writer from Lahore based in London. Their work has been published in Sweet Tree Review and Delta Poetry Review, as well as being shortlisted for the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize in 2021. Angbeen also started and helps run a south-east London based writers’ collective called Page of Wands.

Jasmin Allenspach is an exophonic Swiss writer and award-winning physicist living between Zurich and London. Speaking seven languages, she writes in English despite being a native Swiss German speaker. In a no man’s land between languages, her poetry explores the interplay of multilingualism, identity, sexism, grief, and grandmothers. She is a Young Trustee of the London Library, where she was formerly an Emerging Writer, and runs an international writers’ workshop. When not dissecting words or equations, she trains in classical ballet.

Shyamli is a writer based in London. She primarily engages in confessional poetry & prose, and draws inspiration from music, spirituality and sociology in her work. Prior to BYP, she worked across the public and private sector — working in finance at Goldman Sachs, writing for The Economist, and engaging in various activism, political & non-profit efforts across Asia, US & Europe. She holds an MBA from Harvard, a BA in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford, and is from Delhi, India.

Nomakhwezi Becker is a South African–German interdisciplinary performer, writer, and facilitator working through poetry, theatre, and storytelling. Her practice explores home, memory, and belonging across multiple languages and lineages, often drawing on the technique of Call and Response. Recent works include Holding Ground (Camden People’s Theatre, 2025) and Waiting for Lift Off (University of Johannesburg, 2024). Her poetry and plays have been published internationally, and she has performed at Poetry Africa, Southbank Centre, and Translationale Berlin. A Barbican Young Poet (2023/24) and Starting Blocks artist, she is passionate about collaborative, embodied approaches to creative research and archive. 

A by-product of the American Midwest, Taylor Beidler is a London-based writer. Taylor is the inaugural recipient of the 2020 UEA New Forms Award through the National Centre for Writing. Their collaborative poetry with composer Aliayta Foon-Dancoes was a part of Plastic Language x Tenement Press, available to listen on NTS Radio. They are currently finishing their first novel. They will embark on a Creative-Critical PhD at the University of Essex/University of East Anglia in the fall.

Mae Mae scribbles on her wall, are we connecting right now? In what can only be yelled amidst an all-nighter; whether that be speed dancing, spamming, hoarding or indulging in the dank-cosy nest cubbies of the infant internet. She is merely an apprentice praying (writing, drawing, living) to these observations; wandering through power lines and reeling in a cosmic force field. A space-making landscape which is cracking under cinematic light, wanting herself to talk back at her, and hopefully she’ll talk to you. It is surely no doubt that it proves nonsensical to string these materials together; Jessie Buers (b. Bristol, UK) is not digitally advanced, but knows which intense corridor to shine the torch through. She studied her BFA at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.

Born and raised in Singapore, Winter Chen is a poet, performer and model based in London. Her creative praxis explores the intersections of performance, textiles, text art, visual and object poetry, imagining radical transpoetics for the twenty-first century. Her artist’s books and object-poems have been collected by the National Poetry Library and Bodleian Libraries.

George Duggan is a filmmaker and writer based in South London. 

Daniel Grimston is an actor and writer based in London. 

Bianca Layog is currently completing her MPhil in English Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her poetry has been recognised by The Poetry Society, The Adroit Journal, and The Kenyon Review. She was awarded the 2022 Cosmo Davenport-Hines Poetry Prize at King’s College London. Her work has appeared in Eunoia Review, Strand Magazine, and COUNTERCLOCK, among others. One poem that changed her life is ‘What the Living Do’ by Marie Howe. She has over 200 Spotify playlists and will happily make you one. She is from Manila, Philippines. 

Bluey is a hot mess of air signs and occasional poet. A self-described Weegie/Loiner mongrel, she recently returned home to Glasgow where she continues to make work in dialogue with (or running from) her long covid, including facilitating workshops & salons for fellow crip poets. You can find more of her at https://blueylittle.carrd.co.

Kitya Mark is a writer, facilitator and radio-maker. She holds a BA in English Literature, and an Mphil in Architecture and Urban Studies, both from the University of Cambridge. She published her debut pamphlet the pride flag above the prison in 2023. Outside of writing, she coordinates music projects with previously incarcerated people, and facilitates a walking group with people from refugee backgrounds. 

Tatenda Naomi Matsvai (they/them) is a Zimbabwean born poet, playwright, facilitator and devised performance maker. Working across multiple mediums and disciplines, their work can be described as lyrical, participatory, and multidimensional. Tatenda is fascinated by mythology and deeply inspired by the work of Sun Ra and Audre Lorde, who coined the term bimythology which is a central part of Tatenda’s practice, infusing their lived experience with myth to challenge colonial cosmologies. Tatenda’s work has won the Vault Origins award, been double Offie nominated, toured across England and performed at the Barbican, Southbank Centre, Roundhouse Camden, and internationally as part of Between Pomiędzy literary Festival (Poland). Their poetry will be published in the Barbican Young Poets anthology (2025). And their next show ‘Brave Bettie’ goes on tour with Halfmoon Theatre in 2026.

Francis-Xavier Mukiibi is a poet and performer of Ugandan heritage from North London. He is an alumnus of the Barbican Young Poets programme, the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and the Obsidian Foundation retreat. He was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award for his forthcoming debut pamphlet, Mutabani & [ ]ther Poems (Little Betty, 2025), and won Silver in the Creative Future Writers’ Award for 2024. He produced one of 40 short poetry films as part of the Apples and Snakes Future Voices programme. His poems appear in Under the Radar, Propel Magazine, Magma and Poetry London among others. 

Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha is a writer and editor in London. Her poetry explores dynamics of belonging, the malleability of memory, and the interplay of human and non-human life. She was a 2024 Young Critic in the T.S. Eliot Prize and Poetry Society Young Critics Scheme. Her poem “I’m here in your body and you’re over there in yours” was selected for the Local Prize in the 2024 Waltham Forest Poetry Competition. She is the Associate Editor for Off Assignment magazine.  

Katie O’Pray is a poet and creative facilitator. Their work has been associated with a variety of prizes, institutions and publications, including The ruth weiss Foundation, the National Poetry Competition, the Manchester Writing Competition, The Poetry Review and fourteen poems, among others. Their debut collection APRICOT was published by Out-Spoken Press in 2022; concerned with building a vocabulary for bodily violences – particularly those of gender, of eating disorders, of addiction, of chronic illness, of remembering. 

Rachel Oyawale is a London born poet, playwright, performer and multi-disciplinary artist from of Nigerian and Dominican heritage. Her work has been shortlisted for various awards, including third prize in the Christopher Tower Poetry Competition, the Creative Future Awards, and the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize. She was also shortlisted for the Mustapha Matura Award, longlisted for the Bold Prize for playwriting and had her work staged at the Almeida Theatre as part of their emerging playwrights programme. 

Leon Ray-Fernandes is a writer based in London. 

Soledad Santana is a Venezuelan, London-based poet, feminist community organiser, and human rights researcher. She’s an alumnus of the Poetry Translation Centre’s Undertow Programme for multilingual writers, and is co-founder of a community Spanglish writing group. Her most recent obsession is feminist Latin American neo-gothic literature. Instagram: @Lasoledadsantana 

Jerome is a multi-disciplinary artist who explores stories through writing and movement. He writes through a poetic lens exploring identity, intimacy, masculinity (not limited to). He has spent the past couple of  years building his creative portfolio, working between Birmingham and London, building rapports with National Youth Theatre, Poetic Unity, The Birmingham REP and Tarawa Theatre. His continued focus being ‘supporting and building work that gives young people access to the arts and within his personal work - to challenge ideas around that black male body and to expand their capacity for love’ Upcoming projects include, Do You Want Something To Cry For, a play that's making its way through the fringe season at Theatre Peckham & Camden. 

Conan Tan is a Singaporean Chinese poet and undergraduate at the University of Oxford. His writing explores the politics of the queer Southeast Asian body, with a focus on grief, humour, and memory. He is the recipient of the 2024 Martin Starkie Prize judged by Mary Jean Chan, highly commended in the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize judged by Rachel Long, and the winner of Singapore’s 2022 National Poetry Competition. He has received support from various organisations including Sing Lit Station, Poetry Translation Centre UK, and the Transylvania County Library Foundation as a 2025 Looking Glass Rock Writers' Conference Scholar. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Passages North, Salt Hill, Nashville Review, Rattle, Verse Daily, HAD, and elsewhere.

Website: conantan.com | Instagram: @conan.tan 

Phoebe (@phoebesarahwagner) is a poet and community artist whose work documents the poetry in chatting. Nominated for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2021, her projects include ‘Limpieza en Progreso’, an audio-trail about Barbican cleaners and ‘(Pub)lic House’, a poetry-documentary on Croydon pub closures. Her debut pamphlet The Body You’re In was published by Bad Betty Press in 2019. She’s Poet-in-Residence at The Royal Standard Pub and hosts a niche-themed quiz on Mondays (@phoebethepub) at The Harlequin, Angel.

Pallas is a writer based in London with sporadic artistic endeavours. Current interests angle toward polysemy and using poems as a vessel for resurfacing forgotten histories. Their inveterate weakness is indulgent poetry. Last year, they wrote and performed a solo performance on memory & grief via The Storyteller Residency.