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The Publisher

Kate Birch took over the management of Ink Sweat & Tears in April 2011. She has never had any claims to be a poet. Indeed in response to her attempt to get on a poetry course at the University of Toronto in the 1980s, its tutor referred to her submissions as “doggerel” and “a complete waste of my time.” She survived this, at the time, rather traumatic setback and has spent the intervening decades researching and writing about subjects as varied as 18th Century politics, machine tools and tap dancing.

Perhaps having been outed as one who could not write poetry, Kate has always been a keen supporter of those who can. In 2007, she and her husband, Dominic Christian, set up the IS&T/ Café Writers Pamphlet Commission Competition, for which she also sits on the judging panel. Four years later, she established the Ink Sweat & Tears Poetry Writing Scholarship at the University of East Anglia and then in 2018 the Birch Family BAME Poetry Scholarship, both of which go towards a MA in Creative Writing.

Kate was part of the Advisory Group for the University of East Anglia’s Mellon Poetry Archive and has been involved in several projects with writers’ development agency Spread The Word.

Previous interns

Memoona

Memoona Zahid is a Pakistani-British poet, editor and Ledbury Critic based in London. She has a BA from Goldsmiths in English with Creative Writing and an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at UEA where she was awarded the Birch Family Scholarship. Her writing has appeared in Lumin Journal, bath magg and Tentacular and she was one of the poets featured in the Runaways London project and anthology. Memoona is currently working for Penguin Random House.

Fahad

Fahad Al-Amoudi is a poet of Ethiopian and Yemeni heritage based in London currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths. He is the winner of The White Review Poets Prize 2022 and has been shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poets Prize. He is a Roundhouse 2019 finalist, an Obsidian alumnus, graduate of the Writing Squad and a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. His work has been published in Poetry London, bath magg, Butcher’s Dog and the Macmillan anthology Slam, edited by Nikita Gill. Fahad co-edited the Runaways London anthology. He had been an Editorial Assistant for Own It London, the Poetry Reviews Editor for Magma and is currently an Editorial Assistant at Penguin Press.

His debut pamphlet when the flies come  was published by ignitionpress in 2023.

Desree

Desree is an award-winning spoken word artist, writer, playwright and facilitator based in London and Slough. Currently Artist in Residence for poetry collective EMPOWORD, she explores intersectionality, justice and social commentary, occasionally throwing in a f*ckboy poem. Producer for both Word Up and Word Of Mouth, finalist in 2018’s Hammer & Tongue national final and TEDx speaker, Desree was recipient of the Highly Commended Out-Spoken Performance Prize in 2019 and shortlisted for both the performance and film category in 2020. She has featured at events around the UK and internationally, including Glastonbury Festival 2019, Royal Albert Hall and Bowery Poetry New York. Her pamphlet I Find My Strength In Simple Things (2017/2021) was published by Burning Eye Books. She is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. https://www.iamdesree.co.uk

Leah

Leah Jun Oh is a British and Malaysian-Chinese writer and Ledbury Poetry Critic. She is an alumna of Queen Mary University’s BA (Hons) English Literature and MA Contemporary Writing Programmes, having received a full studentship to study the latter and achieved a First Class degree in both. Her work on poetry was cited as “highly sophisticated, conceptually and emotionally insightful, stylish, indeed rigorously aesthetic.” She writes in London and lives in her head.

Repeat Beat

Peter deGraft-Johnson (PJ) is a Ghanaian-British writer, broadcaster and Hip Hop artist known by The Repeat Beat Poet. His debut pamphlet, A Testament To Life And Death was published in 2022 by Verve Poetry Press, and he is the producer and host of the Rap & Poetry open mic Pen-Ting Poetry and the multi-award nominated Lunar Poetry Podcast, which is archived in the British Library. Peter is a graduate of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and the Obsidian Foundation programmes, and in 2021 he was awarded a residency at the Library of Africa & The African Diaspora in Accra, Ghana.

Lydia Hounat

Lydia Hounat is a British-Algerian (Kabyle) writer, photographer and translator from Manchester, England. She was previously a Writer-in-Residence for Manchester Metropolitan University’s Special Collections’ Archives, and her work has appeared in HOBART, MAI Journal: Feminism & Visual Culture, and TOLKA. She co-curated the French and Imazighen poetry collections at Manchester Poetry Library, and is currently undertaking a PhD at Falmouth University and University Arts London. More of her work can be found at her website.

Chloe Elliott

Chloe Elliott is a poet and writer based in the North. She is a winner of the 2022 New Poets Prize as well as the 2020 Creative Future Writers’ Award. Her writing features in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, bath magg, Bedtime Stories for the End of the World, and Ink Sweat & Tears, amongst others. She is interested in mixedness, scrap ecology, and the tactile world.

Chloe is now the new Creative Apprentice for Modern Poetry in Translation and will also be working at Aesthetica Magazine in York. Her Poetry Business pamphlet encyclopaedia was published in the Summer of 2023.

Prerana Kumar

Prerana Kumar (she/they) is a writer based in London. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UEA and recently won Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Women Poet’s Prize 2022. She was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize 2022 and has been published in The Telegraph, Magma, The White Review, Fruit, and bath magg among others. Her debut pamphlet, Ixora, was published by Guillemot Press in 2023.

Kayleigh Jayshree

Kayleigh Jayshree (she/they) is a poet and short story writer. She was IS&T’s July 2021 Pick of the Month and her poem was commended in the Young Poets Network ‘When a Friend Calls’ challenge. Kayleigh was a Member of the Roundhouse Collective, mentored by Cecilia Knapp and a 2021-2022 Apples & Snakes Writing Room Alumni taught by Dfiza Benson. She is a member of The Writing Squad and joined in 2020. Her poems have been published in The Cardiff Review, Butcher’s Dog, and Isele Magazine. Her poem ‘Anniversary-Dream’ was one of the three winning poems in the Poetry Society’s 2024 Love Poetry Collage Challenge. She is currently working as a Marketing and Publicity trainee with Little, Brown Book Group (Corsair, literary fiction) and featured at Poetry & Words at Glastonbury’s Theatre & Circus area in 2024.

Kobi Essah Ayensuo

Kobi Essah Ayensuo (they/he) is a poet, musician, playwright, actor and creative of many hats based in London. Their work often explores their black queer, trans identity and coming of age, navigating relationships, their Ghanaian heritage, spirituality and decolonising the lens which black history is told. They have been published with Flipped Eye, South London Gallery, Ink Sweat & Tears Press, and Marques Almeida for London Fashion Week 2020, and are a BBC Words First finalist and an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation, Barbican Young Poets, The Writing Room and the Roundhouse Resident Artist programme.

Sofía Masondo

Sofía Masondo is a poet and theatre-maker of Argentine heritage based in London. Her work often explores themes of connection and disconnection between people, place and culture, taking inspiration across different art forms and from an intercultural upbringing. Her poetry has previously been published by South Bank Poetry and featured in the Wildfire Words New Voices Anthology. She is currently undertaking her Bachelor’s degree at University College London with focuses on anthropology, archives and Latin American literature.