Our teaching is handled by our ever-changing faculty of freelance poets. Information about our poetry tutors can be found on the courses they teach. For general enquiries please email [email protected].
Isy is our Artistic Director. She joins the Poetry School from The Story Museum in Oxford, where she has been Head of Learning and Participation for eight years, leading a vibrant team of oral storytellers and creative writing teachers. She is a Trustee of Jane Austen House and studies Bengali at SOAS. Isy grew up in Cambridge, and holds Master’s in History of Art at the University of York. A secondary English teacher in Ilford through Teach First, she spent two years living in a rural area of Rwanda with Voluntary Service Overseas. Her debut pamphlet based on this experience, Dear Rwanda, was published in 2023 with Live Canon. Her work has appeared in Magma, Mslexia, The Telegraph, Poetry Wales, Anacapa Review, Poetry News and Ink Sweat & Tears. She has won 8 poetry competitions including the Julian Lennon Poetry Prize (2021), has been twice Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize (2016 and 2019) and was a finalist in the Brotherton Prize (2021).
Lusungu Chikamata – Finance & Operations DirectorLusungu is our Finance & Operations Director. He brings over 10 years’ experience in finance and operations in the start-up sector and most recently at First Story, England’s leading creative writing charity for young people. He has a passion for collaboration, developing and implementing strategic business functions and charities that provide meaningful creative education.
Andrew Parkes – Head of ProgrammesAndy is our Head of Programmes. He programmes all of our In-Person, Video, and Online Courses. Andy has a BA in Media & Modern Literature and an MA in Modern Literary Theory, both from Goldsmiths, University of London. He founded the independent poetry press clinic in 2009, has written and produced several works for the theatre, and loves the writing of Mark Z. Danielewski and Deleuzian metaphysics.
Jasmine Ward is our Marketing Manager and Laurel Prize Manager; she’s in charge of submissions, partnerships and social media platforms. Jasmine previously managed the Betjeman Poetry Prize, a prize designed to spark creativity in early adolescents. She also has a history in PR and events. When she isn’t working on Laurel she is a freelance writer (specializing in satire), as well as a copywriter and artist.
Maryam is our resident Reviews Editor. She commissions and edits poetry reviews for the School. Outside of this work, Maryam is a freelance writer, poet, critic, and Contributing Editor for Ambit. Her work has featured in various publications and was recently selected for Carcanet’s New Poetries VIII anthology. She is also a member of the Ledbury Poetry Critics.
Tessa is our MA in Writing Poetry Manager. She is also a poet and her three collections, Chalet Between Thick Ears, What Sort of Bird are You? and Try to Find Me are published with Live Canon. She has also been published in several poetry magazines and prize anthologies and performed her poetry across the UK. Tessa has taught as a university tutor of performance poetry, as a leader of therapeutic poetry-writing groups, and as a facilitator of poetry performance workshops.
Beth is our Programmes & Website Administrator. She has a BA in English Literature from Newcastle University and is passionate about live music, independent films and creative writing. She has previously worked for the charity Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books and has a history of working in administration at the Emmerdale Studio Experience.
Sim is our Editorial & Administration Assistant who joined us as part of our partnership with Obsidian Foundation. He works primarily with Beth on administrative and programming projects, and with Maryam on editorial ones. He likes to make spreadsheets and eat cake at regular intervals and when he’s not at Poetry School he wears his bicycle industry hat at Better Health Bikes. His poetry appears in Magma, Ink Sweat & Tears, Propel Magazine, Wet Grain, and La Piccioletta Barca, and he recently wrote and performed his first short play.
Hannah Etim-Gorst – ChairHannah Etim-Gorst studied history at Warwick University and the University of Connecticut, during which time she was a UNESCO youth ambassador. Hannah has also studied art history at The Courtauld. She is a practising solicitor and has been on the board of trustees of the Poetry School for over a year.
In Hannah’s spare time, she loves theatre and dance, having trained in both for over 10 years. Hannah has appeared on stage (in both the UK and USA), in television and film, and will give 10 points to anyone who can spot her ‘starring’ in Harry Potter or Casualty!
Chris Brown OBE DL – Vice ChairChris Brown worked in engineering companies for most of his career and was Chief Executive of David Brown Group plc from 1990 to 1999. He has degrees in Law, Philosophy, History and Business Administration, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Huddersfield.
He was Chair of the governing body of the University of Huddersfield from 2004 to 2019, and was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to higher education. He is also High Sheriff of West Yorkshire.
Jon Sharples – TrusteeJon Sharples practises as a qualified solicitor specialising in intellectual property and art law, and is on the board of Block 336 in Brixton.
Richard Forsdyke is a partner in the real estate group at international law firm Herbert Smith Freehills, where he has 20 years’ experience in advising on major property developers, landlords and local authorities. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy & Law from Cambridge (Robinson College) and an M.Sc. in Politics from the LSE. His politics Master’s thesis was published as “After The Landslide” by the Centre for Policy Studies, where he served as a research fellow. He is a former trustee of The Pavement Poetry Trust and has undertaken courses at Poetry School. He plays rock drums to a low standard and also cures & smokes his own bacon.
Helen Taylor – TrusteeHelen Taylor (BA Hons Cantab) was Literature Officer for Cambridgeshire County Council for 9 years and is now a Literature Consultant and works for Carol Ann Duffy the Poet Laureate as PA and Laureate Project Coordinator. Helen taught in secondary schools for five years before becoming Head of Education at The Poetry Society. She has taught on the University of Cambridge’s MA in Children’s Literature and the PGCE course at the University of Cambridge. She has been a director of two Poetry Festivals and is now on the programming committee of the Cambridge Literary Festival. She has also worked for Cambridge City Council as Community Arts Liaison Officer and founded her own company The Voices Project, which developed and delivered creative projects in the community for local authorities and museums. Helen initiated and project managed the year long Poetry and Museums Project ‘Thresholds’ curated by the Poet Laureate which involved 10 poets in residence in 10 University of Cambridge museums and collections working with young people and writing new poems.
Denise Saul is a writer and poet. She holds a doctorate in creative writing (poetry) from University of Roehampton. Her White Narcissi (Flipped Eye Publishing) was Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and House of Blue (Rack Press) was PBS Pamphlet Recommendation. She is a Geoffrey Dearmer Prize winner. Denise was one of the ten selected poets for The Complete Works, a nationwide mentoring scheme that aims to increase cultural diversity in publishing. She is the founder of Silent Room: A Journey of Language, a collaborative video poem project, funded by Arts Council England.
Katie Colombus is the author of How to Listen and Pathways (Hachette) and is a published poet with a distinction from the MA in Writing Poetry at The Poetry School, London. She creates interdisciplinary work with dancers and musicians and has written libretto for contemporary opera. Katie has an extensive background in arts and wellbeing journalism having written for The Telegraph, The i, Good Housekeeping, The Stage Newspaper, The Dancing Times and Dance Theatre Journals amongst others. She was the recipient of the Chris De Marigny Dance Writers Award and Lisa Ullman Travelling Scholarship for arts writing and was a Gary Parks Scholar for the Critics Association. She was also chosen to take part in a British Council young arts writers international exchange with young writers from the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Pakistan.
Helen Mort is an author from Sheffield. Her collections Division Street,, No Map Could Show Them and The Illustrated Woman are published by Chatto & Windus. Her work has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize. She has also published a novel called Black Car Burning (2019) set in South Yorkshire and her memoir A Line Above The Sky (Ebury, 2022) examines the relationship between mountains and motherhood. Her non-fiction work was awarded the Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain literature and the Banff Grand Prize in Canada. Her biography of the environmental campaigner Ethel Haythornthwaite was published in 2024. She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
We currently do not have any vacancies available – however if you are interested in joining the Poetry School please keep an eye on our website for the latest news and updates.