Mary Jean Chan is an editor of Oxford Poetry and a major National Poetry Competition prizewinner - her debut, A Hurry of English (ignitionpress) is PBS 2018 Summer Pamphlet Choice and she has a first full collection due from Faber in 2019.

 

Claudine Toutoungi, studied at Oxford & Goldsmiths - a dramatist and drama producer, her plays have aired on BBC Radio4 and have been staged at Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph Theatre. Smoothie (Carcanet, 2017) is her debut collection.

 

Slovakian-born Eleni Cay’s first book, A Butterfly’s Trembling in the Digital Age was published in Slovakian - A Small Love Dictionary of Untranslatable Japanese Words (Eyewear, 2017) is her first full collection in English.

 

Amy Key, whose first collection Luxe was published by Salt, has a second collection, Isn’t Forever due from Bloodaxe this June — in 2014 she edited Emma Press anthology Best Friends Forever, poems on friendships between women.

 

Plus first-outings for poems specially written for this evening’s event, on the theme of firsts… first impressions, first dates, first jobs, first nights, initial reactions, first-floor flats, firstfooters, firstborns, first-day-covers and more, by guest poets: Elaine Baker, Angus Strachan, Mark Chamberlain, Kate Noakes, Barney Ashton, Tessa Anslow, Scarlett Sabet, Ian McLachlan, Victoria Grigg, Katy Mack, Charlotte Baldwin, Katerina Grabowsky, Mark Huband, Rachel Donati, Jude Vermeulen, Adam Buckley, Lesley Sharpe, Michael Dench and Fran O’Leary.