Dr Joanne Dixon is a poet and lecturer in creative writing. Her poems appear in a range of journals and anthologies, including New Walk, The Interpreter’s House, Furies (For Books’ Sake), In Transit (The Emma Press, 2018), South Bank Poetry and Places of Poetry: Mapping the Nation in Verse (Oneworld, 2020). Her debut poetry pamphlet, A Woman in the Queue, was published by Melos Press in 2016. Her first collection, Purl (Shoestring Press) launched in July 2020. You can hear Jo reading from Purl, alongside her DMU colleague, Maria Taylor at an event hosted by Five Leaves Bookshop, Nottingham. Dixon’s article on Alice Oswald can be found at C21: Journal of 21st Century Writings: https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.588.

Joanne reads her work across the East Midlands and in 2018 she visited Estonia to present her poems at the Crazy Tartu Festival. She has worked on poetry projects with Bilborough Sixth Form College, Nottingham Contemporary, St. Ann’s Allotments and UNESCO Cities of Literature in Poland, Estonia, Ireland and the UK. Working with UNESCO Cities of Literature and Nottingham Trent University, she co-edited a collection of new writing from European writers: Writing the Contemporary (2019): Poetry and Postcards from UNESCO Cities of Literature (Trent Editions).

Professor Simon Perril is a poet, visual collagist and critic. His poetry publications include The Slip (Shearsman 2021) In the Final Year of My 40s (Shearsman 2018), Beneath (Shearsman 2015) Archilochus on the Moon (Shearsman 2013), Newton’s Splinter (Open House 2012), Nitrate (Salt 2010), A Clutch of Odes (Oystercatcher 2009), and Hearing is Itself Suddenly a Kind of Singing (Salt 2004). As a critic he has written widely on contemporary poetry, editing the books The Salt Companion to John James, and Tending the Vortex: The Works of Brian Catling. He has written many book chapters and articles on contemporary poets. Alongside his writing, Simon has developed a visual practice in collage and video. He is director of Leicester Centre for Creative Writing at DMU.