James Berry was born in 1924 and brought up in a tiny seaside village in Jamaica. He learnt to read before he was four years old, mostly from the Bible, which he often read aloud to his mother’s friends. When he was 17, he went to work in America, but hated the way black people were treated there, and returned to Jamaica after four years. In 1948, he made his way to Britain, and took a job working for British Telecom.

One of the first black writers in Britain to achieve wider recognition, Berry rose to prominence in 1981 when he won the National Poetry Competition. His numerous books include two seminal anthologies of Caribbean poetry, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (Chatto, 1984). His latest book, A Story I Am In: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), draws on five collections of poetry, including Fractured Circles (1979) and Lucy’s Letters and Loving (1982) from New Beacon Books, Chain of Days (Oxford University Press, 1985), and Hot Earth Cold Earth (1995) and Windrush Songs (2007) from Bloodaxe. Windrush Songs was published to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

He has published several books of poetry and short stories for children (from Hamish Hamilton, Puffin and Walker Books), and won many literary prizes, including the Smarties Prize (1987), the Signal Poetry Award (1989) and a Cholmondeley Award (1991). He was awarded the OBE in 1990. He lives in London.

Sara Berkeley was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1967.

American poet

Connie Bensley was born in south-west London, and has always lived there, apart from wartime evacuation. Until her retirement she worked as a secretary to doctors and to an M.P. and as a medical copywriter. Her latest book from Bloodaxe is Finding a Leg to Stand On: New & Selected Poems (2012), which presents new work with poems drawn from six previous collections: Progress Report and Moving In, originally published by Peterloo Poets, and four later books published by Bloodaxe: Central Reservations (1990), Choosing To Be a Swan (1994), The Back & the Front of It (2000) and Private Pleasures (2007).

Peter Bennet did a part-time Creative Writing MA at Newcastle University. He has received major awards from New Writing North and Arts Council England and been a prizewinner in the National and the Arvon International Poetry Competitions, and in the Basil Bunting Awards.

All the Real is a poetry collection published in 1994. The Long Pack is a poetry collection published in 2002. Goblin Lawn: New and Selected Poems is a poetry collection published in 2005, and it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The Glass Swarm is a poetry collection published in 2008, and it was a Poetry Book Society Choice which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. The Game of Bear is a poetry collection published in 2011.