Zakariye’s debut pamphlet, Pulling Faces, has been longlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize and was published by Bad Betty Press. In 2022 his short poetry film Cages was broadcast on BBC 4 and BBC iPlayer. In 2025 he turned the short film into a play, also titled Cages, which had a 3-show run at the Roundhouse. His latest play, Pretend like it’s Calm, played at the Birmingham Hippodrome as part of their Origins Festival in 2026. 

He was a Roundhouse and Hayati Resident Artist and has performed his work at the likes of Westminster Abbey, Hay Festival and TEDx.

Georgie Jones is a writer and performer known for her humour and heart.

She was a Roundhouse Poetry Slam finalist, before joining the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and subsequently spent a year as Roundhouse Resident Artist.

It’s all a bit Roundhouse centric this, isn’t it?

But WAIT, there’s MORE!

Georgie’s one-woman shows combine spoken word, stand up and storytelling and have been commissioned by China Plate, MAC, Warwick Arts Centre, In Good Company and generously supported by the Arts Council.

She has performed in theatres, at festivals and on radio stations all over the UK.

She is often praised for her warmth and wit, so took her poetry to social media in search of other, more varied, compliments. Georgie has amassed over 140k followers, over 5.8 million views and her work has been shared by Malorie Blackman, Adrian Lester and British pop-rock band Bastille who said her poetry was ‘fucking brilliant’. Clang.

When she’s not peddling her own work, Georgie loves a bit of collaboration.

She has worked with numerous brands to create bespoke poetry commissions, ranging from independent body-positive slow-fashion brand LAW Design Studio to the Woodland Trust and everything in between.

She combines her love of writing with her love of love through offering a bespoke ghostwriting service for weddings speeches and events.

Georgie also writes and performs with Chortle Award nominated sketch group Just These Please who have sold out runs at Edinburgh Fringe and Soho Theatre respectively.

Outside of writing and performing, Georgie very much enjoys browsing for cute but, let’s be honest, purposeless homewares and devouring ‘sharing’ bags of crisps.

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet was published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024 and was named Guardian Book of the Month. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. She was recently honoured with a DIVA Award for Excellence and was also included in the Independent’s 2024 Pride Power list.

Liz Berry is an award-winning poet whose collections include Black Country (Chatto, 2014); The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto, 2018); and The Home Child (Chatto, 2023), a novel in verse. Liz’s work, described as “a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands” (Guardian), celebrates the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Liz has received the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, The Writers' Prize and two Forward Prizes. Her poem ‘Homing’, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus. Liz is a patron of Writing West Midlands and lives in Birmingham with her family. 

Maureen Onwunali is a Dublin-born Nigerian poet and a two-time national slam champion living in Milton Keynes. Often writing from a place of political urgency, Onwunali utilises poetry as a means for creative intervention, bridging sharp sociopolitical commentary with the small everyday acts of compassion that bring us back to our shared humanity. Notable features and commissions include the Hay Festival, Ledbury Festival, Pearson, Roundhouse, TG4, The Poetry Society, The
Irish Embassy, Transport for London, 1000 Black Interns, Milton Keynes International Festival, Obsidian Foundation, and WOW – Women of the World.