Hello, this is my last week at @poetrysociety after 4 & 1/2 years. I wanted to share some of the work/projects/poets that really stand out to me when I look back on this time, in no particular order:

Jay Bernard winning the Ted Hughes felt like a watershed moment. Jay is an incredible writer + I felt very lucky to have ran the prize the year they won. I spent the bus journey back from the awards night abuzz. Surge had (& has) a profound effect on people 1/2

2 because it ruthlessley exposes how state structures make those without power even more powerless, and how race & power are still so linked. My mum, who grew up in unsafe london council flats, called me to say Jay's work moved her to tears. only time that's happened in my career

Running the National Poetry Competition has taken up most of my year. It’s nonsense-huge. Publishing the winners each year makes it all worth it, and I’ve loved getting to know all the 40-ish winning and commended poets I’ve worked with. too many to list but you know who you are!

special shout out to @hollawaynesmith, who not only gave us an amazing National Poetry Competition winning poem but ploughed some of his prize money back into the comp so people on a low income could enter for free. I’m so so happy we got to make that happen, thank you Wayne.

Podcasts! Back in 2016 I found a cupboard full of sound recording gear at work and wanted to do more audio stuff with all these amazing poets that were drifting through the poetry cafe but who weren't being published by us at the time

if you’ve listened to any of our podcast content since then outside of The Poetry Review interviews, then I produced those! And that’s all thanks to @jtaylortrash, who was happy to host while slowly, over multiple interviews, I figured out how to actually record a podcast.

I’m glad we were able to interview so many great poets inc @Danez_Smif (pictured, left!), Rob Auton, @SabrinaMahfouz , @salenagodden , sam sax, and many others. If the The Poetry Review podcast explores text, the aim of these were to explore culture & community.

I’ve been able to inflict some weirder stuff on our podcast feed since then - including a 10 hour long podcast recorded from our poem-a-thon fundraiser, and a discussion on poetry & video games with the very nice poetry people @kofthetriffids and @ssexton02

There's lots more memories of events, poets, audiences, poems... but this thread is getting self indulgently long now. That's it from me and sorry I never replied to your email.

Feel free to get in touch via DM if you need proper contact details from me for poetry reasons, other work reasons, friendly reasons, or all of the above!