Bella Cox:
An internationally acclaimed artist, Bella Cox (she/her) is a British Spanish writer, poet, and performer whose poetry centres around relationships and how personal identity influences politics and ways of loving one another. While her proudly queer, feminist, relationship-fuelled work navigates her own identity, her multicultural upbringing has influenced work that explores the notions of belonging, home, and self-empowerment, making art that reclaims the body as the first home and embraces sensitivities and neurodivergence as tools for self-liberation. Often including a loop pedal in her performances to create layered vocal soundscapes underscoring her poetry, her work has been described as captivating, passionate, and cleverly thought out.
Her debut poetry pamphlet; Sikiliza was published with Flipped Eye in 2023. She has performed and shared work at events such as TEDx Pretoria, Sköll World Forum, Bi Pride UK, and the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival, among many others. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies, and she has been commissioned to write for institutions such as the Barbican Centre, HSBC UK, Time Out London and others, as well as Westminster Abbey where she was the Poet in Residence for 2023.
Instagram and Tiktok @BellaCoxPoet
Website: www.bellacox.com
Kayla Feldman:
Kayla Martell Feldman (she/they) is a Queer, neurodivergent, Jewish writer and director who started writing poems in 1999 and never stopped. She co-hosts the monthly poetry night Process, was a co-producer for the Kirkby Lonsdale Poetry Festival last year, and is on the Safe Spoken committee working towards a safer and more inclusive poetry community. They are a three-time Genesis poetry slam winner, were shortlisted for the Heroica Poetry Prize and the Derby Poetry Festival Prize, and their work has been widely published in the UK, North America, and online. Her second poetry collection, SAME STORY, is out now from Verve Poetry Press.