I commission other poets to blog about their process on Open Notebooks. Sometimes they might write a poem and write about that, other times I suggest a collaboration.

Our guest bookers are:

Miriam Nash. Miriam Nash is a poet, performer, workshop leader and freelance project coordinator who runs Snail Mail, a series of workshops exploring creative letter writing, in partnership with Slow Down London and Foyles. Her work credits include the London Teenage Poetry SLAM, Barbican Young Poets, UrbanWords and positions at Spread the Word and Apples & Snakes. I love Miriam’s poetry and creative spirit and am looking forward to collaborating with her.

I met Harry outside the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farrringdon waiting to go in to a magazine launch. I spotted his notebook  and an animated notebooky conversation ensued.  Harry sent me a link to a wonderful dance and poetry collaboration with the London College of Fashion and I was impressed. As we met whilst waiting, I thought that would work well as the theme of our collaboration ‘In the Time it Took…’ An experiment in multi-tasking. Harry is also a literary agent based in London and his pamphlet, Where the Rivers is under consideration for the Eric Gregory Award.  He teaches Creative Writing at HarperCollins Publishers as part of their Authonomy new writing programme.

Inua Ellams. Inua is a graphic artist as well as a poet and performer; I recently went beserk at an auction and bid for a limited edition of his illustrated pamphlet 13 Fairy Negro Tales (flipped eye, 2009). Described as the love child of John Keats and Mos Def, Inua’s work crosses 18th century Romanticism and the West African tradition of storytelling with contemporary diction. Inua’s also promised to open up his sketchbook as well as his notebook.

Andrea Robinson is an artist, writer and printmaker. She is also a ’30/30′ poet and I featured her poem that came out of my dead hawk in the stream prompt on Open notebooks. I then saw some pictures of Andrea’s prints and thought it would be great if she were to create some prints around that poem and blog about her process. I’m interested in how poems might turn into something else and this would be a transition from a short video, to text, to print. Andrea originally trained in fashion design and has also worked as a designer and illustrator.  After a number of years as a freelance arts manager for film, theatre and visual arts, she has returned to her own creative practice and is working towards her first solo show.  Check her blog to see more of her work.

Leila Segal. Leila started writing short stories when she was living between London and Cuba from 1999 to 2006. She’s now preparing the manuscript for publication with Flipped Eye and will be logging the process of redrafting over an intensive two week period.  Leila works on community art projects, using writing and photography to give marginalised groups a voice and led the Jaffa Photography Project, with Jewish and Palestinian teenagers in Israel. Leila is an intensely thoughtful writer and individual and I’ll be fascinated to see what she comes up with here.

Jocelyn Page. Jocelyn Page is a poet from rural Connecticut who lives in South East London. Her work has appeared in Smiths Knoll, The Interpreter’s House, City Lighthouse Anthology, nthposition, Shadowtrain and The New Writer Prose & Poetry Magazine. Her debut pamphlet will be published in 2010 by tall-lighthouse press. Having read Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Jocelyn has decided to compartmentalise her notebook writing and report on the results. I don’t think it will be science as such, but expect some empirical findings!

Naomi Woddis. I’ve invited Naomi on board to work with me on a photo renga. Naomi is a talented portrait photographer as well as a poet and I’m excited by the thought that we can work together to create a piece that will combine words, photographs and the web’s capacity for immediacy and iterative collaboration. She is also the founder and curator of Poetry Mosaic a fabulous collaborative online experiment in found poetry and is currently running a residency at the Culpeper community garden in Islington.  See her blog Curses and Riots for more about her work.

Malika Booker. Malika has represented British writing internationally, both independently and with the British Council in numerous locations including Slovenia, New Zealand, India and Azerbaijan. Her pamphlet Breadfruit was published by flippedeye in 2008 and recommended by the Poetry Book Society.