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This episode aired first on Saturday 23rd July 2022 to celebrate the launch of the new printed journal Take Flight from Flight of the Dragonfly, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to all the guest stars…

For all Dragonfly details and how to order your own copy of Take Flight

https://flightofthedragonfly.com/

Andy Breckenridge

Andy Breckenridge lives in Brighton but is originally from Oban. He writes mainly about self-imposed exile, relationships, and memory. He is also an honorary member of East Kilbride rock group, The Moes.

He has work in several print and online journals such as Dreich, Green Ink, Southlight, Take Flight, Acid Bath and Eat the Storms  He is currently filleting his first collection, The Fish Inside, and has been a featured reader on Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word, Eat The Storms, and reads regularly at the Northern Poets Society.

Follow Andy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/drbafc

Bruce McRae

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and The North American review. His books include The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press), Like As If (Pski’s Porch) and Hearsay (The Poets Haven).

Claire HM

Claire HM is a working-class writer from Birmingham, who writes about the possibility of magic in the mundane. Her poetry has appeared in Tears in the Fence, streetcake, Cape Magazine and Coven Poetry, amongst others. Her novella ‘How to Bring Him Back’ (Fly on the Wall Press) is set in 90s Brum indie subculture, and is a story framed by a spell to let go of the past. It was shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards Best Novella 2022.

Find Claire at her website: https://clairehm.com/

Follow Claire on Twitter https://twitter.com/clairehmwriter

David Ralph Lewis

David Ralph Lewis is a poet based in Bristol, UK who has two pamphlets out: Our Voices in the Chaos and Refraction, as well as an interactive game called Reality Adjustments. David is on Instagram at @davidralphlewis

David’s website is www.davidralphlewis.co.uk

Faith Joanne

Faith Joanne is from North Wales, but now lives in Hampshire. She enjoys the outdoors, growing her own veg, reading and films, and socialising with friends.  She works as shop manager, and also a young person’s counsellor. She has been writing for 17 years, mainly poetry, but also fiction and articles, with a few poems published in anthologies. This year, she has had a few poems published in the online journal, Flights, and the poem she reads today, is in the anthology publication, Take Flight. In addition to this she has performed some poems for the podcast, Eat the Storms, on two occasions She started performing her own poetry 6 years ago, at Incite, a LGBT+ event, and has since performed at Polari and regularly with Dragonflies since 2019. She will be publishing her first pamphlet this year; this poem is also from that collection. Her poems are from her own experience of mental health, self-harm, suicide, death and loss.

Dorian Nightingale

Dorian has always been fascinated by emotive language and the impact of textures and harmonies within words. His inspiration in writing stretches across a broad range of artistic influences from Caravaggio to Radiohead. After having a number of poems published, he is currently working towards his first collection. He is a graduate from New Writing South, Brighton, England as well as being a Masters graduate from the LSE where he studied Politics and Psychology. When not writing he is mostly clearing up after his teenage children and then recovering by immersing himself in music and cursing the effects of old rugby injuries. He lives in Sussex, England with his family

Dorian is on instagram at @secret_soliloquies 

Jeff Gallagher

Jeff Gallagher is from Sussex, UK. His poems have featured in publications such as Rialto, Shooter, Dreich, Littoral and The Journal. He has had numerous plays for children performed nationwide. He was the winner of the Carr Webber Prize 2021. He has been a teacher of English and Latin. He also appeared in an Oscar-winning movie.

Julie Stevens

Julie Stevens writes poems that cover many themes, but often engages with the problems of disability. She is widely published in places such as Ink Sweat & Tears, Fly on the Wall Press and Acropolis Journal. She has two published pamphlets: Quicksand (Dreich 2020) and a Stickleback Balancing Act (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2021). Her next collection Step into the Dark will be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press later this year.

Julie’s website is www.jumpingjulespoetry.com

Follow Julie on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JulesJumping

Instagram @jumpingjulespoetry, FB @Julie Stevens

Linda Jackson

Linda Jackson   is the founding editor of Seahorse Publications, (www.seahorsepublications.com), her own work includes The Siren Awakes (2020) and The Cabinet (poetry collection by Red Squirrel Press, 2021), she has been published in various anthologies, including New Writing Scotland. The second memoir, Siren: Wild in Me will be late this year as will her novel, The Mark of the Rose, she is currently working on a group of travel poems for a title Wanderlust Women, out in November 2021, a lifelong musician.

Linda’s website is www.lindajaxson.com

Matt Alton

Matt Alton is a Brighton based poet whose work has appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Flights, and The Fight Continues.

You can find him on Instagram at @mattaltonpoet

Nadia Arioli

Nadia Arioli is the co-founder and editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. Their recent publications include Penn Review, Hunger Mountain, Cider Press Review, Kissing Dynamite, Heavy Feather Review, and San Pedro River Review. They have chapbooks from Cringe-Worthy Poetry Collective, Dancing Girl Press, Spartan, and a full-length from Luchador. They were nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 by As It Ought to Be, West Trestle Review, Angel Rust, and Voicemail Poems.

Niki Strange

Niki Strange rediscovered poetry when undergoing treatment for breast cancer in 2019 and is passionate about poetry’s power to support health and wellbeing. She won Arts Council funding in 2020 to create work as poet in residence at Macmillan’s Horizon Centre in Brighton, also devising and delivering 16 poetry workshops for people affected by cancer. It was a significant, and incredibly rewarding, departure from her previous job as a digital innovation consultant! She’s since read at Sussex Poetry Festival, Dragonflies, Second Light and Cheltenham, won a couple of second prizes (Sussex 2019 and Second Light 2021) and been published Artemis, Flights and Lighthouse. Recently Niki won a micro pamphlet competition with Hedgehog Poetry Press.

Her Stickleback XXXI is available here: www.nikistrange.co.uk.

She’s super delighted to be featured in the ‘Take Flight’ Anthology published by Flight of the Dragonfly.

Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NikiStrange

Oz Hardwick

Oz Hardwick is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University. He has published ten collections and chapbooks of poetry, with the eleventh, A Census of Preconceptions, due from SurVision books in late 2022. He’s the editor of numerous anthologies and critical works, most recently Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2022) with Anne Caldwell. Passionate about the dialogue between artforms, Oz’s latest release is the Paradox Paradigm album by international space rock collective Space Druids.

Phil Vernon

Phil lives in Kent in the UK, where he returned in 2004 after spending two decades in different parts of Africa. He works in the international humanitarian and peacebuilding field. His version of Stabat Mater with music by Nicola Burnett Smith has been performed in London and Canada. This Quieter Shore, a micro-collection, was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2018, and a full collection Poetry After Auschwitz was published by Sentinel in 2020. Another collection, Watching the Moon Landing, was published by Hedgehog in 2022.

Phil is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/philvernon2

Find out more about Phil at his website www.philvernon.net/category/poetry.

S Reeson

S Reeson is 55 and a multi-disciplined artist, who has suffered with anxiety and depression since childhood. They increasingly produce videos of their work for dissemination via YouTube. Their poetry has been published by The Poetry Society, Bloomsbury/One World, Flapjack Press, Dreich and Forest Arts plus many online indie journals, and they perform regularly in both virtual and IRL Open Mics.

S Reeson is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/InternetofWords

Gaynor Kane

Gaynor Kane who loves lots of different things including smashing down literal & metaphorical walls and often uses her writing to give others a voice. Her next collection of poems ‘Eight Types of Love’, will also be published by Hedgehogpress Ed on 30th July.

Gaynor is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/gaynorkane

Her website is https://gaynorkane.com/

Damien B Donnelly, Producer, Host and Poet

Follow Phil on Twitter at https://twitter.com/philvernon2

Damien B Donnelly is a 46-year-old Irish, adopted, gay, writer and podcast producer who spent 23 years living in Paris, Amsterdam, and London, returning to Dublin in 2019. In 2020, his debut pamphlet Eat the Storms appeared on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize followed by a Stickleback collection, and second Pushcart Prize nomination, in Jan 2021, both published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. He produces and hosts the poetry podcast Eat the Storms, now in its 5th season with 300+ international guests on over 12 platforms. In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a poetry pamphlet co-written with Eilin de Paor, was published in Jan 2022 followed by his first full collection Enough! coming 29th August 2022, for which he was awarded an Agility Award by Arts Council, Ireland. The Fingal Arts have funded his next collection Back from Away, due in 2023. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, both online and in print. In May 2022 he opened submissions to the inaugural issue of The Storms, a journal of poetry, prose and visual art and it will be launched in August 2022.

He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/deuxiemepeau and instagram at both @damiboy and @weshallalwayshaveparis

You can purchase his pamphlets and pre-order Enough! at his website https://deuxiemepeaupoetry.com/

Backing music for Eat the Storms is from Purple Planet Royalty Free Music, with thanks…

https://www.purple-planet.com/

You can find us on many platforms including Spotify and here is the link…