All Around the Jailhouse is here.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)

Born to Wisconsin farmers, Ella wrote to support her family. Her mildly steamy poems were hugely popular with readers, though critics snobbishly included her poems in some anthologies of ‘worst poems’. During the First World War, Ella believed that her husband instructed her from beyond the grave to visit the Allied Forces in France to boost morale which she duly did, reciting poems to the troops. The Winds of Fate is here.

Chrissy Williams

Chrissy grew up in Devon and now lives in London. Her first collection, Bear, was named as one of the Daily Telegraph’s Fifty Best Books of 2017. She founded the Free Verse: Poetry Book Fair and co-edits the world first edible poetry magazine, Poetry Digest, which prints poetry on cakes. She has read at venues including the Royal Albert Hall and the Southbank Centre, and on BBC Radio 3. Chrissy is bilingual Italian and also works as a tutor and an editor, including for comics and videogame magazines.

Devil at the End of Love is here.

Elinor Wylie (1885–1928)

Elinor published four collections of poetry and four novels in the last four years of her life, as well contributing to magazines including Vanity Fair. Her work won praise from writers including Edna St Vincent Millay, and her first novel was famously launched with a torchlit procession through the streets of Manhattan. She lived a rather tempestuous personal life and was married three times. Elinor’s work was much admired during her lifetime and, though her reputation diminished in the mid-twentieth century, her position as an important modernist writer is now recognized.

Escape is here.

Sun Yün-feng (1764–1814)

Sun Yün-feng was the daughter of an official and married a scholar. She was a favourite student of the Ch’ing dynasty poet Yüan Mei, who is notable for supporting women’s poetry during an era when it was suppressed.

On the Road Through Chang-te is here.

Belinda Zhawi

Belinda was born in Zimbabwe and moved to London aged twelve. She studied at Westminster and Goldsmiths and went on to be a 2015/16 London Laureate and the 2016/17 Institute of Contemporary Arts Associate Poet. She co-founded community and performance platform BORN::FREE, and has been the Serpentine Gallery Schools Artist-in-Residence. Belinda published the poetry pamphlet Small Inheritances in 2018 and also works in London’s jazz and beatmaking scene. Dzoka (Return) is here.

Index of First Lines

A circle. Shoulders and hard chests

A poem stays awake long after midnight

A voice from the dark is calling me

Across the fields as green as spinach

Aim higher than the clod of mud

All around the jailhouse

An owl and a girl

At intervals my mother’s voice was heard

Away and see an ocean suck at a boiled sun

Books, books, books!

Breathe

Color or lemon, mango, peach

Daughters, when they come

Do you remember what happened

Don’t believe the quiet heat that waits to pull

Driving back over the blue ridge

Edith Sitwell is fastening the gold collar