New Poets Collective
Supporting emerging poets from diverse backgrounds
With support from the TS Eliot Foundation, our New Poets Collective recruits a new cohort of poets every year, helping them to hone their voice.
With the generous support of the TS Eliot Foundation, we are very proud to introduce the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective 2021/2022:
Adeola Yemitan
Adeola Yemitan is a theatre maker, singer, lyricist and poet from London. She worked in architecture before disrupting her training to go into church ministry. Unexpectedly, it was here she was given the platform to explore performance poetry.
She has performed her poetry at Latitude festival and recently created I Don’t Care, a short spoken word-infused play looking at the apathy and anxiety surrounding the climate crisis. This was commissioned by the National Youth Theatre to be performed by an ensemble cast at COP26 in Glasgow.
Aea Varfis-van Warmelo
Aea Varfis-van Warmelo is a British-Greek actor and writer. Her work has appeared in The White Review, A) Glimpse) Of), Spam and From Glasgow to Saturn. She is currently completing an MA in writing at the Royal College of Art.
Aoife O’Connor
Aoife O'Connor is a queer woman of colour, poet and producer based in Derby. She is an experienced slam and spoken word performer and co-founded an intersectional female-led performance night to tackle the lack of diverse spaces in Derby.
O’Connor has worked in many different aspects of poetry and performance, including workshop facilitation, coaching slam teams and producing and facilitating events, but she priotises writing and performing work inspired by her lived experiences.
Bec Mackenzie
Bec Mackenzie grew up in Essex, and now lives in east London. She completed her MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia in 2020 and has worked in publishing with both academic texts and memoir.
Abstract Benna
Abstract Benna is a south London-born spoken word performer of Bajan and Jamaican heritage. He started writing at the age of eight, inspired by his love for rap music and films. From a young age his perspectives were shaped out of everything which gave Brixton its standout reputation: crime, culture, history and community.
He has worked with Spitfire Audio composer Oliver Patrice Weder and been featured in productions by the BBC, the Roundhouse, Rich Mix, City Hall, Virgin Media, Museum of London, National lottery and Lambeth council’s Elevate movement.
Colin Bramwell
Colin Bramwell is a poet, musician and performer from the Black Isle, in the north of Scotland. His poetry has been published in Gutter, The Scotsman, Northwords Now and Poetry Scotland. A pamphlet, The Highland Citizenship Test, was published in March 2020 by Stewed Rhubarb. Bramwell was the runner-up for the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, and shortlisted for the 2018 Wigtown Poetry Prize.
His co-translations of the Taiwanese poet Yang Mu have been published in Renditions, Chinese Literature Today. He has also written and performed a number of spoken word theatre shows: his latest, Umbrella Man, toured to fringe festivals in Prague, Australia, New Zealand and Edinburgh, where it completed a full run at Summerhall. Bramwell is also a regular on the live poetry circuit in Scotland.
He is currently undertaking a creative writing doctorate at St Andrews, exploring poetry translation into Scots as an aspect of poetic practice. He is also the Languages of Scotland Editor at The Scores. He writes and performs in Scots and English.
Emma Djalili
Emma Djilali is an Algerian-Canadian poet, writer and community organiser living in Tottenham.
Hasti Crowther
Hasti Crowther is a British-Iranian poet and screenwriter living in south east London. A member of the Ledbury Poetry Critics, Crowther has published poems in The Poetry Review and Perverse, and has co-written the short sci-fi film Digging, produced by Film4, Fruit Tree Media, and Dark Pictures as part of the Foresight series. Crowther is also the host of monthly open mic and poetry night Fresh Lip.
Jess Murrain
Jess Murrain is a queer poet of British-Caribbean dual heritage working mainly in live performance and theatre. Her wider practice explores film-poetry and she's also co-founder of Theatre with Legs, an experimental theatre company.
Murrain won Silver in the Creative Future Writers' Award and won first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition. Her poetry has appeared in bath magg, Magma (forthcoming), Perverse, Powders Press, Queerlings, Tentacular, Under the Radar and Field Notes on Survival: A Bad Betty Anthology. Her debut pamphlet is forthcoming with Bad Betty Press.
Jinhao Xie
Jinhao Xie, born in Chengdu, is interested in nature, the mundane, the interpersonal and selfhood. They are a current member of Southbank Centre New Poets Collective 2021/2022 and Barbican Young Poets 2021/2022.
Their work is in POETRY, Poetry Review, Gutter, harana, bath magg, and anthologies, including Slam! You're Gonna Wanna Hear This, edited by Nikita Gill, and Instagram Poetry for Every Day by the National Poetry Library. They are the inaugural champion of Asia House Poetry Slam.
In their spare time, they love to cook for their loved ones. They are most drawn to visual arts and are working on their first pamphlet based on translation, objects and memories.
Joel Auterson
Joel Auterson is a poet from Belfast, currently based in London. He is part of the Rare Mammals collective and co-hosts Boomerang Club, a spoken word night. He is a former member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and Barbican Young Poets. His debut pamphlet, Unremember, was published in 2017 by Bad Betty Press.
Lorraine Dixon
Lorraine Dixon is a music teacher and a poet who enjoys sharing her work in print and in performance. She has read her work at Fire and Dust (Coventry) and for Writing on the Wall’s Writers’ Bloc (Liverpool). She uses her poetry to explore the multiple elements of her identity as an older, working class woman, born in Yorkshire and whose heritage is African Caribbean.
Dixon has had poems published in the Train River Poetry anthology (Train River, 2020), Geography is Irrelevant: poetry in isolation (Stairwell Books, 2020) and Where We Find Ourselves: Poems and Stories of Maps and Mapping from UK writers of the global majority (Arachne Press, 2021).
Oluwaseun Olayiwola
Oluwaseun Olayiwola is a Nigerian-American dancer, choreographer, poet and critic based in London. His work has been commissioned by Spread The Word and Studio 3 Arts. In 2021, he was a recipient of the Samuel Ross Black British and POC Artist Grant. He recently completed an MFA in choreography from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he developed the hybrid choreo-poetic practice he utilises in his live performance and written work.
In 2018, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom. As a choreographer, his work has been presented in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and the US. As a writer, his critical work and poetry have been published in the United Kingdom and the US. He became a Ledbury Poetry Critic in 2021.
Robin Park
Robin Park was born in Suwon, grew up in Los Angeles, and currently lives in London. Her poems have received an honourable mention in the Bullock Poetry Prize, awarded by the Academy of American Poets. During the week, she works as a data scientist.
Yvette Siegert
Yvette Siegert is a Latinx poet, translator, scholar and critic. Her poetry is grounded in storytelling and the archive, exploring themes of migration, territory, multilingualism and other forms of movement (translation) between what is known and unknown.
She is the author of Atmospheric Ghost Lights, selected by Monica Youn for the Poetry Society of America’s 2021 Chapbook Fellowship Award. Her debut collection, which was a winner of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize, is forthcoming from Bloodaxe Books.
Her translation of Chantal Maillard’s Killing Plato (New Directions) was shortlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, while her compilation of Alejandra Pizarnik’s poetry, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 – 1972 (New Directions), won the Best Translated Book Award.
Born in Los Angeles, to parents from El Salvador and Colombia, Siegert grew up between the United States and Mexico and is now settled in the West Midlands. She is completing a doctorate in Spanish American and Caribbean literature at Merton College, University of Oxford.
Applications are now closed for the New Poets Collective 2023/24
Please do keep an eye out in April 2024 for when we re-open applications for 2024/25.
If you have any queries about the New Poets Collective, or questions about your application, please contact the Creative Engagement Manager (Emerging Artists).