Plymouth, as everyone knows, is a cool city. And one of the reasons is because it is packed full of cool people. PlymouthLive has published “cool lists” in 2020 and 2021 and defined “cool” as having talent or achieving something spectacular, often against the odds.

Unlike other cool lists you won’t find any models, social media influencers, or Love Island contestants. So here is a new cool list of 50 people (actually 51 because we sneaked another in), mostly creatives, who all achieved something in the past year and have helped cement Plymouth’s reputation as a city with talent, style and substance.

If you know of an incredible and talented individual who belongs on this list, please let us know. You can contact us via email at news@plymouthherald.co.uk or comment below.

This list is in no particular order. You can find other amazing individuals on our 'Amazing Plymouth' page here.

Jess Strain

Jess Strain, textile designer

Ivybridge-born textile designer Jess Strain combined sustainable fashion with digital design and fabrication skills to create startup business Ovrbloom with the support of Art University Plymouth’s Smart Citizens Programme. After taking part in the programme Jess received a Bronze Creative Conscience Textiles Award and the Young Innovators Grant from Innovate UK and The Prince’s Trust, supporting the development of her business.

Jess set her sights on the world of fashion when she was a child and attended the Arts University’s Saturday Arts Club between the ages of 12 and 15, before she pursued an art foundation course and graduated with a first class honours degree in textiles: innovation and design from Loughborough University. The seed for Ovrbloom was planted in Jess’ final year of university, when she began researching the impact of fabric and textiles on people and the planet. Ovrbloom is a sustainable brand creating textile accessories and soft furnishings which are naturally dyed and created using waste material. Jess discovered the Smart Citizens Programme at Arts University Plymouth whilst working as an artist-in-residence at Totnes Art and Design Foundation Course.

Ed Tapper

Ed Tapper, poet and photographer

Plymouth writing scene’s artist in residence completed his transformation to full blown poet by publishing his first collection. Ed Tappers’s debut work Easy Peelers was launched at the pop-up arts space Sprite, in Plymouth city centre, in October.

The venue, inside the former Nando’s restaurant unit in Old Town Street, was turned into a pop-up for a range of cultural events organised by Dr Helen Billinghurst, who teaches at Arts University Plymouth, until Christmas before Sprite relocated. Ed is an artist and photographer who lives in Tamerton Foliot and has been documenting the city’s literary events by sketching its prime movers for almost a decade.

He even staged an exhibition of his drawings of some of Plymouth’s best-known writers at Totnes in 2016. After sitting in on dozens of readings and being exposed to the poetry and prose of the city’s scribes, Ed started writing his own verse and became a regular, and highly regarded, reader at city literature events.

Laura Horton

Laura Horton, playwright and Plymouth Laureate of Words

Plymouth’s Laureate of Words Laura Horton turned her experience of hoarding into a play which opened at the Theatre Royal before enjoying a lengthy run at the famous Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Laura’s 60-minute play Breathless was staged at the Lab, at Theatre Royal Plymouth, and selected for the Pleasance Theatre Trust Futures programme performed at Pleasance Courtyard, in Edinburgh, in August.

The play centres on a character called Sophie who, in her late-thirties, is exploring long repressed sides of herself. Breathless is described as a funny, honest and stylish exploration of the knife-edge of hoarding, from the joy to the addiction and suffocating shame.

Based on Laura’s real-life experience of clothes hoarding, the work is a “dark, magical story about trying to escape a world you’ve spent a lifetime carefully building”.

Laura was Plymouth’s third Laureate of Words and the first playwright to hold the position. She is an alumni of Soho Theatre Writers Lab and in 2020 wrote and produced her first film, A Summer of Birds, which was a Toast of the Fringe winner in the Scottish capital.

Her short Plays include Giddy Tuppy, Labyrinth Diet and This I Believe. Full-length plays include Labyrinth Diet, and Triptych, which was staged at Theatre Royal Plymouth in 2021.

She was listed in The Stage 100 in 2021 for her project Theatre Stories CIC. She is also an artistic associate of The Space, London. She is the daughter of Plymouth writer Babs Horton.

Babs Horton

Babs Horton
Babs Horton, author

Plymouth’s busy literary scene honoured one of the city’s most established authors in 2022 when novelist Babs Horton was made a patron of the Plymouth Proprietary Library (PPL) and gave a talk about her work. Her novels include the prize-winning A Jarful of Angles and her latest release Winter Swallows, alongside Dandelion Soup, Wildcat Moon and Recipe for Cherubs.

Her debut novel A Jarful of Angels, published in 2003, won the Pendleton May prize and was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club first novel award. She was made a patron of the PPL, an independent subscription library founded in 1810 and containing many books on a variety of subjects. Babs is the mother of playwright Laura Horton.

Paul Hillon

Plymouth artist Paul Hillon, creator of Presence in Absence
Paul Hillon, artist

The city gained another piece of public art after Arts University Plymouth unveiled a sculpture in the grounds of its campus. Situated between Arts University Plymouth, Charles Cross Police Station and Drake Circus Shopping Centre, the sculpture, named Presence in Absence, is a large-scale hollow cubic steel structure, more than 2m tall, that “captures the light that cuts through it”.

It was created by Paul Hillon, a multidisciplinary visual artist and technical demonstrator at the arts university, who lives and works in Plymouth. A studio holder at KARST Gallery, Mr Hillon studied fine art at BA and MA levels at Arts University Plymouth, before joining the university as a technical demonstrator within the Materials Lab. His work has featured in exhibitions across the South West.

Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin, poet and publisher

Plymouth poet Andrew Martin is something of a 21st Century renaissance man – his wrote and illustrated his poetry collection, became a publisher to some of Plymouth’s leading poets, and for good measure taught himself coding too. Andrew’s stunning book Shoals of Starlings is also themed around one of his other passions: birds. The collection contains 60 poems and 60 of his own illustrations, one for each piece of verse, with titles such as Wrens, Gulls, Red-winged Blackbird, A Silence of Swans, and Murmuration.

It was published by Waterhare Press and described by Plymouth’s Language Club poetry collective as “one of the most accomplished collections to have come out of the Plymouth scene for some years”.

Andrew’s follow-up collection, Solar Satellites, was then published by his own Shoals of Starlings Press, and he has since published collections by Plymouth poets Brian Herdman, Matt Thomas, Thom Boulton and more to come.

Andrew is originally from Bristol but has lived and worked in Plymouth for more than 20 years. He studied wildlife illustration in Carmarthen, Wales, but later worked as a trainee jeweller in Plymouth. His career then took a sharp swerve and he went to work in the pathology labs at Derriford Hospital. After 13 years he moved to the NHS’s IT department having learned computer programming and taught himself to code.

Louise Sharland

Louise Sharland, crime writer

For Plymouth writer Louise Sharland 2022 was nothing short of criminal - with her second thriller hitting the bookshops. Major publisher HarperCollins released the nail-biting My Husband’s Secrets hot on the heels of Louise’s successful debut The Lake.

That proved a hit after its publication in March 2021, gaining favourable reviews and four-and-a-half stars on Amazon.

Louise has been well-known on Plymouth’s literary scene for more than a decade, and has been a member of Plymouth Athenaeum Writers’ Group and given workshops on crime writing. She has won the Woman & Home Magazine short story competition in 2010, with her entry Black Rock printed in an anthology alongside writers such as Ruth Rendell and Lee Child.

And in 2017 was one of six finalists, from 1,000 entrants, in the Daily Mail’s debut crime novel contest. In 2019 mum-of-one Louise won the national Big Issues crime writing contest after submitting her novel Vigil, a psychological mystery about loss and revenge. Her prize was the deal with the prestigious HarperCollins publishing house that has yielded The Lake and My Husband’s Secrets.

Around the same time she obtained an MA degree in crime writing from the University of East Anglia, where the creative writing faculty counts Ian McEwen and Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro among its famous alumni. Louise’sTwitter profile says she is “passionate about social justice and fudge”.

Matt Thomas

Matt Thomas, poet and artist

You might think The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a long title for a book - but Plymouth writer Matt Thomas has got that beat. The American-born artist and writer’s debut full-length poetry collection revelled in the splendid title of What I Thought About While I Watched You Shorten the Handles of Two Canvas Shopping Bags Thereby Making them Easier to Carry.

Matt’s book was published by Plymouth’s Shoals of Starlings Press. Matt, originally from Seattle but now residing in Stoke, has lived in the UK for 22 years and said he is “very left-handed”. He self-published his first poetry and collage ‘zine, Fractured Free Verse, in 1985. Since then, he has unleashed numerous pamphlets, ‘zines, booklets, comics and “what can only be described as ephemera on an unsuspecting and largely unaffected world”.

As a visual artist, Matt’s work has been exhibited throughout the South West, Seattle, Singapore, and in various mail-art projects worldwide. He is one of the directors of Royal Adelaide Art and Yoga CIC, in Plymouth.

Corrinne Eira Evans

Corrinne Eira Evans, jewller

Arts University Plymouth alumna Corrinne Eira Evans was selected by British Vogue as one of the best new jewellers to see at this year's Goldsmiths’ Fair in London, the most prestigious event in the UK for silversmiths and goldsmiths. She is one of 136 independent jewellers who were selected from across the UK by a panel of experts to appear at Goldsmiths’ Fair 2022, the destination for contemporary silver and fine jewellery, which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year.

Corrinne, who is the resident jeweller and co-founder of Okehampton’s Moor & Moor Gallery, showcased her work during the second week of the fair. Shortly after Goldsmiths’ Fair she exhibited again at the yearly Elements Festival, Scotland's only selling fair of contemporary jewellery and silver, held in the historic Lyon & Turnbull auction rooms in the heart of Edinburgh. Her tutors have included Plymouth’s Tweeny van Mierlo and Victoria Sewart and she says Dartmoor is a key inspiration for her work, with Belstone and Haytor being some of her favourite places to visit.

Johnny Mains

Johnny Mains, horror author and editor

Plymouth author Johnny Mains released two spine-tingling new books - one of which has a strong Cornish connection. The writer, a top name in horror circles nationally, had his second novel, A Man at War, released on October 31, Halloween.

And it was followed on November 10 by Celtic Weird: Tales of Wicked Folklore and Dark Mythology, a hardback collection of eerie stories by Celtic authors, including stories by Cornish writers or set in the Duchy. Published in hardback by the British Library, it contains 21 tales from Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Breton, Gaelic, and Manx authors, in addition to those from Cornish writers AL Rowse, Rosalind Wade and Frank Baker. It also contains three translated Gaelic stories which are reprinted for the first time since 1905.

Johnny launched the book, for which he has written an introduction, with a talk at The Ivybridge Bookshop and another event at Okehampton’s Dogberry and Finch Books. Johnny has been praised for his work finding lost stories by Victorian female authors and the Celtic Weird grew from this research.

Rosemarie Corlett

Rosemarie Corlett, poet and academic

Dr Rosemarie Corlett launched her poetry collection Flightless Bird at the House, on the University of Plymouth campus, in November. Rosemarie is a poet and associate lecturer in English and creative writing at the University of Plymouth. Her poetry has been published with Poetry Wales, Guardian Faber, IOTA, Lighthouse Journal, Cambridge Scholars Press and others.

Described as a “startling debut” by author and Times columnist Dr Miriam Darlington, Rosemarie’s collection, published with Shearsman Books, explores the plight and place of flightless birds in our imaginations and in the world.

Ashanti Hare

Ashanti Hare, artist, with Arts University Plymouth VC Prof Paul Fieldsend-Danks

Plymouth fine art graduate Ashanti Hare won the KARST Graduate Residency, which granted a six-month art residency at the city’s KARST studios, shared with a selected Bath Spa University graduate. It allowed both artists to support each other’s development and enrich their professional practice.

Ashanti explores the duality of life as a human being and spiritual entity. Combining digital manipulation, folk craftsmanship and writing, Ashanti often explores the boundaries between cultural identity and spiritual entity through sensory experiences that include tactility, scent and moving image. The research is motivated by underlying references to pop culture, witchcraft, literature and music.

Arts University Plymouth has a rich history of working in collaboration with KARST, which was founded in 2012 in response to British Art Show 7, to develop an artist-led space in Plymouth that could produce and show the best international contemporary art. In 2022 Arts University Plymouth worked in partnership with KARST, The Box, University of Plymouth and Plymouth Culture to deliver British Art Show 9, another exhibition of national significance and a key moment for the city.

For a number of years, KARST has offered an annual test space for fine arts students to practise showcasing their work and exhibit in a professional, external environment, an opportunity that has helped a number of Arts University Plymouth graduates to establish themselves as artists in the city.

Phil Smith

Phil Smith, poet, author, playwright and academic

Plymouth writer Dr Phil Smith has written a magical book which blurs the boundary between fiction and fact and is gathering rave reviews. Phil’s Living in the Magical Mode: Notes from the Book of Minutes of a Guild of Shy Sorcerers has been described as a “found-manuscript book”, a literary version of a found-footage movie such as The Blair Witch Project.

It tells the story of a very unusual book club, one that delves into the works of writers such as supernatural storyteller Arthur Machen, and is written in the style of a collection of minutes “edited” by Phil. The book, published by Triarchy Press, has illustrations by the author and his daughter Rachel Sved, and contains references to real places, movies and TV programmes, and real magical traditions and ideas.

Phil is a performance-maker, writer and academic researcher, specialising in work around walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies, web-walking, somatics and counter-tourism. His doctoral research was in tourism and performance and with Helen he is one half of Crab & Bee, who completed an exhibition and walking project called Plymouth Labyrinth, funded by Arts Council England, and published the book The Pattern (2020).

Phil studied drama at university in Bristol, spent 25 years working mostly as a freelance playwright - with occasional jobs as warehouseman, porter and grass cutter - and set up and worked for TNT Theatre. In 1998 he became interested in performance in unconventional sites, such as on boats and in electricity generating stations, and in how walking could be used to generate writing. His books include Anywhere, about South Devon, and fictions including the novels Alice’s Dérives in Devonshire and Bonelines.

Ian McCarthy

Ian McCarthy, photographer and serviceman

Former Royal Navy petty officer and current Arts University Plymouth photography student Ian McCarthy returned from Colorado, USA, where he hae been documenting the Armed Forces Para-Snowsport Team (AFPST) in training. His trip saw him sharing the slopes with the AFPST as a photographer, documenting their preparations for future events.

A talented snowboarder, Ian was medically discharged from the Navy after 20 years service when he developed lymphoma. His condition meant he had to stop training competitively. Through photography, Ian found a way to combine the sport he loves with his talent for photography.

Ian first went away with the AFPST, which exists to facilitate the rehabilitation of military personnel, in 2018. On his return his health deteriorated and he needed a stem cell transplant. He is aiming to visit Colorado with the AFPST again in 2023.

Hazel Hon

Hazel Hon, poet and writer in residence

In December 2022 the Crème de la Crème "spoken word" showcase appointed Plymouth poet Hazel Hon as resident writer. Hazel is one of the many, unpaid, participants at the monthly Crème de la Crème events at Leadworks, in Stonehouse, and gives up her time to have new acts and talent showcased.

The poet, a familiar face on the city’s literary scene, is noted for her poignant, yet witty, verse. Describing herself as a “spoken word artist” Hazel said: “My poems are deep, trite, simple, funny, complex, often quite short” She has published the collections Angels and Facets of Love.

Hazel is a transgender woman originally from Birkenhead. She had hopes of becoming an electrician or maybe an electronics engineer and through a series of unexpected events ended up in Plymouth as a musician, artist and a poet. During lockdown in 2020 she wrote poems as she tried to “make a connection in what had become a very upside down world”. She was told she should publish them. So did and continued to write poems and “inadvertently became a performance poet and open mic compère”.

Kenny Knight

Kenny Knight, poet and event organiser

Plymouth poet Kenny Knight’s latest collection is entitled Love Letter to an Imaginary Girlfriend but it is also a love letter to his home city. Many of Kenny’s poems are as much influenced by walks around Plymouth as by the Americana music he enjoys.

He launched his third collection, from Shearsman Books, with a special event and reading at Plymouth Central Library, in October. Kenny grew up in Honicknowle and now lives in Bretonside and said Plymouth is central to his work. He lovingly calls his hometown “Speedwell City” after the ship that accompanied the Mayflower to found the new world.

“Love Letter to an Imaginary Girlfriend is a love letter to my hometown and the hometown of my imaginary girlfriend,” he said. “The poems in this collection were written between 2012 and 2020 in Bretonside, Devil’s Point, Mannamead or in my childhood home in Honicknowle and wild West Park, as well as in other places , here and there, all over town.”

Shri Gunasekara

Shri Gunasekara, artist

Shri Gunasekara, a BA illustration graduate at Arts University Plymouth, was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation Award, a new annual award to recognise outstanding creative and academic achievement, alongside a sustained contribution to the university community, where the student has produced high quality work and made significant progress as well as making a positive contribution to their programme of study through excellent studentship.

Shri is an illustrator who specialises in sequential image-making. Her work explores family dynamics and intimacy. Shri visually shows these emotive narratives by using bold shapes and compositions, as well as vibrant colours and textures, to give her digital work an organic feel.

These ideas are explored through experimental formats, testing the boundaries of picture books, graphic novels and comics. Shri’s projects are an accumulation of fun and intimate family connections through a vivid and exuberant palette of text and visual storytelling.

Keith Rossiter

Keith Rossiter, author

A former journalist at The Herald put the lockdown months to good use and penned a page-turning thriller which is gathering rave reviews. Keith Rossiter worked for more than a decade at The Herald and sister paper the Western Morning News but is now turning heads in the literary world.

His debut novel, The Chaos Game, is garnering five-star reviews and has been described as “intelligent and well-rounded”. Set in Greece, a country Keith knows well, the narrative is set at the time of the 2008 economic crash which brought a chaos that many people have still barely recovered from.

The Chaos Game, published by Tokolosh Media, has been described as a novel of love and vengeance – and on Crete revenge is a dish best served hot. For Keith, a former member of Plymouth Athenaeum Writers and well respected in the city’s literary circles, the idea for a story set in Crete was born 10 years ago, on one of his regular visits to the island, but nothing went down on paper until about nine years ago. Then in March 2020 lives changed. The pandemic and lockdown meant people had a lot more time to themselves. So Keith cautiously opened that electronic drawer and pulled out The Chaos Game and gave it a complete revamp, turning his manuscript into the literary equivalent of a white-knuckle ride.

Mimi Jones

Mimi Jones, poet, playwright and event organiser

Mimi Jones is a Plymouth poet, playwright and one of the people behind the new open mic night launched in Plymouth’s “queer district”. LGBTQIA+ events business Queer Out Loud, of which Mimi is a key figure, organised the showcase for queer performers of all types, whether poets, musicians, comedians or those with some other talent.

It ran a Queer Poetry Night: Spooky Edition on Halloween at the Minerva Cafe, in Bretonside.

Mimi studied film, animation and media production at Arts University Plymouth and is a familiar face on the Plymouth writing scene having read poetry at CrossCountry Writers, Provi Poets and more. Mimi is among the city city’s most promising young writers and

In July 2022 was part of the team that brought the play Shift to Theatre Royal Plymouth. Mimi was a co-writer with Caitlin Brawn and Freya Kings. It was co-directed by Fynn Roberts and Pip Gunning, and produced by Assen Chan.

The team behind Shift sprang out of the Lab Company, which is for theatre-makers from the Plymouth area at the start of their careers. It’s a year-long training programme with Theatre Royal Plymouth which offers mentorship and networking opportunities.

Sarah Adams and James Fletcher

Sarah Adams, poet, musician and children's author

She’s regarded as being amongst the cream of Plymouth’s poets and in 2022 Sarah Adams teamed up with a city illustrator to create a children’s book about a hungry cow. Sarah penned the delightful tale of a cow named Munch, and her adventures were brought to life in vivid colour by artist James Fletcher.

Sarah moved to Plymouth in 1983 to study literature and philosophy at what is now called Plymouth Marjon University. Sarah met her partner John in 1990, and they have two, now grown up, children. She and her partner work in the community and voluntary sector, including music and a great deal of food bank work.

Sarah is well known on the Plymouth literary scene and has read at various events staged by the likes of CrossCountry Writers and WonderZoo. She has also produced two volumes of poetry, and been published in numerous anthologies, in print and online, and although her new book -titled Once Upon a Munchtime There Was a Cow Called Munch! And Oh! She Did Love to Munch! - is a departure from her usual output she said: “This is my first children’s book - but more are planned.”

James Fletcher, artist

The artwork is the product of James, aged 43, who was born and grew up in and around Plymouth. James is a self-taught graphic illustrator and father of two and a featured artist on Acidmath.net, a humanities and spirituality community based in Canada, selling psychedelic artwork on furniture and apparel.

His career in design began in 2005 after graduating with honours in photomedia and design communication from the University of Plymouth. An active humanitarian, James is an online network manager for a homelessness charity and also draws maps and creates historic war memorial signage, in conjunction with The Plymouth Historical Society and Sealed Knot Society. He was a featured artist at the 2019 Guildhall Devcon comic conference.

Pete Golding

Pete Golding, event organiser

It’s become one of the most talked about fixtures on Plymouth’s growing literature scene and the Crème de la Crème "spoken word" event, hosted at Stonehouse’s Leadworks, always features a bill of established and up-and-coming Plymouth poets and writers.

It is not an open mic evening, but a “spoken word” event that serves to give scribes a platform to showcase their published work or road-test new material.

Founder Pete Golding started Crème de la Crème during Covid lockdown in 2020, initially held via Zoom and he said: “I’d wanted to do it anyway, but lockdown came so I started it online and when restrictions ended moved to Leadworks, which is a great venue.”

Each Crème de la Crème features six to eight writers, and there has even been a special event dedicated to the work of members of Waterfront Writers. Before launching Crème de la Crème, Pete was involved with the WonderZoo arts collective and hosted some of its literary events.

Before that he was associated with Blackbooks and The Word, the lit showcase founded by the late Mike Green. Pete’s initial involvement had been to write reviews of the events and the writers performing, but when Plymouth poet Nick Ingram was unable to compère Pete stepped in and caught the hosting bug.

But, so far, Pete, a retired sociology and criminology lecturer at City College Plymouth, has restricted his involvement to organising and introducing others. He said: “I do write poetry, but I write to be read, rather than to recite.”

Samantha Carr

Samantha Carr, author, poet and creative writing tutor

Samantha Carr is an award-winning Plymouth writer who has been hosting free flash fiction workshops at Cafe Bene, West Hoe. Samantha is a fiction writer and published poet and has a masters in creative writing from the University of Plymouth.

In 2018 she triumphed in Plymouth’s annual battle of the writers. Sam, who works in medical legal admin, won the Flash Fiction Slam held as part of the PlymLit18 literature festival. About 20 writers took part in the challenge at Plymouth Athenaeum. She became the sixth woman to win the slam – no man has ever taken the crown.

In addition to having her short tale Mirror Mirror published in The Herald, she has had short fiction printed in online publications such as Bandit Fiction, 101 Words, Flash Fiction magazine, Fairfield Scribes and Stinkwaves Magazine. Her poetry has been published in Acumen, Cephalopress and the Storms. In 2020 she was a highly commended runner up in the Causley International Prize for poetry.

Steve Spence

Steve Spence, poet

It’s not exactly a compilation but Plymouth poet Steve Spence’s latest collection contained verses penned over a five year period. Steve’s How the Light Changes is the acclaimed poet’s sixth collection and follows 2021’s Eat Here, Get Gas & Worms.

But while that was a tiny A6 “pocket sized” format published by The Red Ceiling Press, How the Light Changes is an altogether larger work published by leading poetry imprint Shearsman Books, written during lockdown, but with pieces from 2012 to 2017, The poems are written in the montage style Steve has perfected since his inaugural collection, 2010’s A Curious Shipwreck, saw him shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best debut, one of the world’s most coveted literary honours. This cut-up style sees Steve take lines from overheard conversations, TV and radio broadcasts and other sources and mix them with the invented.

How the Light Changes contains 67 poems, most only a page long. The collection is stylishly presented and has a cover photo of buildings and steps in Rome, taken by Plymouth photographer Ed Tapper. It came out in 2022.

Steve graduated from the University of Plymouth’s creative writing MA course in 2007 but has been involved with the literary scene in Plymouth for many years, becoming a part of the Poetry Exchange, at the Arts Centre, which morphed into the well-known Language Club. Steve’s poems have also been published in seven anthologies and numerous literary magazines.

Chloe Sweetlove

Chloe Sweetlove, artist, with David Noyce, chair of Arts University Plymouth's board of governors

Arts University Plymouth graduate Chloe Sweetlove won the Board of Governors Award in 2022. The aim of this award is to highlight and celebrate the achievements of a student who, in the opinion of the board, has overcome obstacles to educational achievement, raised the profile of the university and demonstrated a significant contribution to university life. Chloe was studying on the BA painting, drawing and printmaking course at the university.

Chris White

Chris White, performance poet and 'submerging artist'

Chris White is a performance poet and “submerging artist'' originally from the Midlands, but now based in the South West and a regular face in Plymouthwhere he has appeared at events staged by arts collective WonderZoo in Union Street. With a passion for making poetry which is fun and accessible, Chris has performed his work nationally at festivals and spoken-word nights from Tongue Fu to Raise the Bar.

He regularly makes full-length shows which he's taken to the Theatre Royal Plymouth, Camden People's Theatre, Cambridge Junction and The Pleasance.

He's won multiple slams, is a former Bard of Exeter and the first Riddler in Residence at Exeter Cathedral. He's also the creator & host of Spork! Poetry CIC and has produced and facilitated workshops for adults and younger people.

Merris Longstaff

Merris Longstaff, poet

Merris Longstaff was born in Jamaica and emigrated to the UK in the 1960s, a descendant of the Windrush Generation. She started a nursing career in the 1970s and trained as a therapeutic counsellor.

She has rich experience of both British and Caribbean cultures which has proved a big influence on her poetry, Her work is written and usually delivered in an authentic patois style, which strives to tackle the highly-sensitive subjects of racism and politics with punch and humour. Her poetry was published in the anthology The Commons, from Plymouth’s Waterhare Press and in 2022 she read at several events in Plymouth including at Plymouth Marjon University.

Tony Frazer

Tony Frazer, publisher

He may not be the most recognisable figure on Plymouth’s poetry scene but Tony Frazer is one of its most significant being the publisher of several of the city’s leading poets. Tony, who now lives in Oxfordshire, grew up in Plymouth and still has close links with the city, regularly visiting.

He is also the founder of leading national poetry publisher Shearsman Books, which has issued collections by an impressive list of Plymouth poets including Steve Spence, Norman Jope, Tim Allen, Kenny Knight, Fred Beake, Philip Kuhn, Anthony Caleshu and now adding Rosemarie Corlett to the pantheon. Shearsman was originally founded as a magazine in 1981, but developed into a poetry press, and now produces about 50 books each year, and the famous Shearsman magazine, now in book format and coming out twice a year.

Tony grew up in Plymouth, attending Hyde Park primary school. His father’s job as a naval armourer took the family away from the city, but he returned in his teens. Tony’s interest in poetry grew while studying art history at the University of Essex. A career in banking took him to Hong Kong where he became editor of a magazine called Imprint.

Shearsman was started as a solo project with some leftover manuscripts and grew over the years, really taking off as a magazine in the mid-2000s. It expanded into publishing collections, chapbooks, pamphlets, criticisms and occasionally prose, even e-books, with publications aimed at the UK and US markets.

Tony is also a linguist and has published work in translation, mainly Spanish/South American and German. While living in Devon in the late 1990s he met Plymouth poets Steve Spence, Tim Allen, and Norman Jope. He attended the Plymouth Language Club and ran the uncut readings at the Exeter Art Centre for a while, which attracted the Plymouth writers and he has gone on to issue books by several of them.

Rebecca Mansell

Rebecca Mansell, author, broadcaster and psychologist

Plymouth psychologist Rebecca Mansell celebrated the publication of her collection of “feel good” short stories in 2022. Rebecca is a city-based writer and teacher of law and psychology who has contributed to national and regional magazines on a variety of issues from health and beauty to spiritual and historical topics.

But she also writes fiction and has now seen her book Dreams Can Come True: and Other Short Stories published by Tim Saunders Publications. The volume is described as “a collection of comforting, heartfelt, feel good short stories about life with satisfying uplifting endings”.

Rebecca has qualifications in counselling and psychology, and as a counsellor invites people to share their concerns and in return provides them with compassion and acceptance. She said she has knowledge and empathy surrounding all anxiety issues and emotional difficulties and has said her empathy is built from a lifetime of enduring, managing and surviving difficulties from complex trauma to complicated anxiety.

During the Covid pandemic Rebecca, aged 51 and from West Park, spoke in the regional press about her battle with anxiety and other mental health challenges. She said he has battled agoraphobia and an anxiety disorder for many years. Rebecca has featured on Plymouth-based radio station Ptown Radio where she has broadcast thrice weekly with an “80s show”, an agony aunt slot and a rock show.

Anthony Caleshu

Anthony Caleshu, poet and academic

One of Plymouth’s leading poets and academics Anthony Caleshu is professor of poetry and creative writing at the University of Plymouth. Anthony is the author of four books of poems, as well as various works of fiction and critical writings about contemporary poetry and is also the programme leader for the MA degree course at the university.

Anthony’s poems have appeared widely in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Poetry Review and Poetry Ireland Review and in Boston Review as winner of the Boston Review Poetry Prize.

Danny Strike

Danny Strike, poet and playwright

Plymouth writer Danny Strike is better known for his plays but his new collection of poetry is turning heads in the city and includes one poem based on when he experienced a potential school shooting. Danny’s piece School Matters is based on an incident when he was teaching in Germany and police found a gun in the home of a teenage boy - along with a list of teachers it was thought were targets.

The school was one of several Danny taught at during a long career as an English, drama and philosophy teacher. Born and bred in Plymouth he most of his working life was in London schools, but when he retired from the classroom 10 years ago he returned to his home city and began to write plays.

He’s now penned 24 pieces of drama of which 12 have been produced professionally mainly by Pilot’s Thumb Theatre, Plymouth’s own professional company, which he helped found with Cassie Monck and Beth Scott Hewlett and for which he also directs and acts. But after becoming involved in Plymouth’s active literary scene too, attending readings at CrossCountry Writers and Providence Poets, Danny began work on a poetry collection, now published by Leicestershire-based Matador and entitled The Senderos: A Journey of the Mind. Danny, a keen hiker, named the collection after senderos, the Spanish word for hiking.

Eleanor Andrews, Faye Bentley and Stella Olivier

Eleanor Andrews, artist

For the third year running three graduates from Arts University Plymouth were selected to join forces with Tate for Christmas, as part of the annual Tate Christmas card commission and competition. Illustration graduate Eleanor Andrews, textiles graduate Faye Bentley, and fine art graduate Stella Olivier were selected from an open call to all undergraduate and postgraduate Arts University Plymouth students that saw more than 120 entries submitted.

The three final designs selected went on sale through Tate for Christmas 2022. The students whose designs were chosen are paid royalties for the sales of their Christmas cards and get to name Tate as a client when they’re pitching for future work, which will be invaluable for opening doors throughout their careers.

Stella Olivier, artist

Eleanor’s ‘Christmas Time Mischief designs, Faye’s Have a Holly Jolly Christmas designs, and Stella’s Coniferous Forest designs went on sale at Tate galleries and shops across the UK, as well as online.

This was the second time that Plymouth-based Italian-German visual artist Stella Olivier has won a Christmas card commission from Tate, after her All that they could pick up on their screens was snow was put into production in 2020.

Faye Bentley, artist

Brian Herdman

Brian Herdman, poet

According to the internet you are never too old for amusement parks, colouring books and dancing. That’s debatable. But Plymouth poet Brian Herdman is proof that you are always young enough to have your first book published.

Despite tinkering with writing for yonks and being lauded on the live Plymouth writing scene for the past few years, Brian has never had a collection of his verse available until a month before his 75 th birthday.

His superb collection 78 45 33 received rave reviews after being published by Plymouth imprint Shoals of Starlings Press in 2021 and he cemented his reputation with several fine readings in the city during the past year. The collection’s title is taken from the revolutions for vinyl record turntables, and represents “the revolutions of my life”, as Brian puts it.

Brian studied philosophy in his 30s at the Open University and there is a philosophical bent to some of the poems.

Brain's parents hailed from Belfast, Northern Ireland, but being Catholics they left the province to escape sectarianism and find a better life in England. They settled in Manchester, where Brian was born and lived until he moved to Plymouth as a young man in his 20s.

He said: “I went back up North for a while and then came back here. I lived in France for a time and taught English in China for seven years at two different universities.”

Caitlin Brawn

Caitlin Brawn, poet, musician and playwright

Caitlin Brawn is a writer, musician, theatre-maker and researcher based in Plymouth, who graduated from the University of Plymouth in 2018 with a degree in English and creative writing. She was one of three finalists for the Plymouth Laureate of Words role in 2020 and performs poems and songs and, in her own words, “spoken wordy poetry”.

Caitlin is part of the Rebels music programme with the Barbican Theatre and is also a member of the Theatre Royal Lab company.

Kurt Jackson

Kurt Jackson, artist

Internationally renowned contemporary artist and sculptor Kurt Jackson unveiled his sculpture The Plym Stone outside Arts University Plymouth in 2022. Made from local limestone, granite and recycled Plymouth Gin bottles it was inspired by the geology of the immediate Plymouth area.

Kurt used the world-class facilities at Arts University Plymouth, collaborating with FabLab Plymouth and its manager and experienced designer Ben Mundy, to create elements featured on the sculpture.

Kurt is a contemporary artist, based in Cornwall. His artistic practice embraces an extensive range of materials and techniques, including mixed media, large canvases, print-making, the written word and sculpture. He has an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter and is a fellow of St Peter’s College and Oxford University.

His focus on the complexity, diversity and fragility of the natural world has led to artist-in-residences on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, the Eden Project and for nearly 20 years the Glastonbury Festival. He is also an ambassador of Survival International and frequently works with Greenpeace, Surfers Against Sewage, Friends of the Earth and the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. In 2015, Mr Jackson and his wife set up the Jackson Foundation Gallery.

Jo Sparkes

Jo Sparkes, screenwriter and novelist

This American screenwriter who moved to Plymouth finished her latest novel in 2022 and is hoping it will be as big a hit as her award-winning fantasy series. Jo Sparkes, who is also a sportswriter, arrived in Plymouth with her partner in 2021 and soon joined Plymouth Writers’ Group, which meets at the University of Plymouth.

She has since written her novel The Honey Trail, set in Missouri during the slave era of 1850 and is aiming to have it published. Jo is already a published and award-winning author. Her fantasy series The Legend of the Gamesmen, has garnered three BRAG Medallions, awarded by American readers and book clubs, and a 2015 silver IPPY award, given to the best independent publications, for e-book juvenile/young adult fiction. The four-book series is available from Waterstones website.

Now, however, Jo has turned to historical fiction. She said: “The Honey Trail opens when Maggie, a slave on a cotton plantation in 1850 Missouri, watches a butterfly escape a spider to soar free over the Mississippi River. Suddenly the possibility of her own escape burns through her mind.”

Spencer Shute

Spencer Shute, poet, Morris dancer and event organiser

Spencer Shute is well known on the city’s reading circuit and has also performed extensively throughout the South West. His material combines Beat poetics with something much more ancient and is also filled with wide-ranging cultural references. His reading style has been described as “mesmeric and enthralling”.

In 2020 Spencer created Providence Poets in The Providence, Greenbank. The pub’s intimate and cosy setting proved ideal for culture vultures to enjoy poetry and prose readings, and even some music, from a sample of Plymouth’s leading writers.

Spencer chose “the Provi” to host Providence Poets because he and pub landlady Shirlie Jones are both members of the Old Town Twelves Morris dancers, and both have a penchant for the folk scene, which fits nicely with support for the written, and spoken, word.

Spencer has stressed that Plymouth has a vibrant poetry scene which only grew stronger during the pandemic lockdowns. He said poets and writers took inspiration from the difficulties of those years when they were unable to attend events and readings, and are now producing excellent new work.

Provi Poets has also drawn attention with its eye-catching posters, designed and created by Spencer and used on social media to advertise the meetings.

The often colourful images are created, montage-style, from a range of sources, and Spencer said: “A lot came from old book covers, it’s all punk-style cut and paste.”

David Wooley and Ann Gray

David Wooley and Ann Gray, poets, publishers and event organisers

This married couple published the love poetry they wrote to one another as a new collection of verse. David Woolley and Ann Gray are the joint authors of Dear Life, which has been published by independent Cornish press Scryfa.

David was born and raised in Plymouth but now lives in Liskeard with Ann. Dear Life charts their early “difficult” years as a couple, when they lived a distance apart.

They met up only fleetingly, often when attending poetry events or music gigs in different places across the South West and beyond. Over the years the couple exchanged poems rather than letters or emails and these have been collected together to form the book, which is already receiving plaudits.

Scryfa is run by writer Simon Parker, a former Western Morning News journalist, who said: “It was a great pleasure to work with Ann and Dave on what is a wonderful collection of poems.”

Ann and David, who tied the knot in June 2022, work together running Coombe House, a care home in Liskeard. But they have run the Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival for a number of years. Ann is author of a number of collections including Painting Skin (Fatchance Press, 1995) and The Man I Was Promised (Headland, 2004). She was commended for the National Poetry Competition 2010 and won the Ballymaloe Poetry Prize in 2014.

David has published four collections of poetry. He established and ran Westwords poetry magazine and press for several years, and has worked in literature development for more than 25 years. David also ran the Dylan Thomas Festival for 11 years.

Annie Jenkin

Annie Jenkin, poet

Plymouth poet Annie Jenkin’s love of verse and the Devon countryside came together in a new collection of poetry celebrating her strolls around the county. Annie, a former emergency room nurse and lecturer at the University of Plymouth, had her debut collection published by Cyberwit in 2022 and will be read a selection from Come Walk With Me: Poems Reflecting Walks Around Devon in Plymouth’s smallest pub: the Providence pub, in Greenbank.

Annie’s collection was well received, with Michael Escoubas, editor of the poetry website Quill and Parchment, writing: “Jenkin crafts her poems in clear, precise lines, something like walking.”

Although Come Walk With Me is Annie’s first collection she has had poetry published before in Highland Park Poetry, the Avocet, Quill and Parchment and anthologies published by Plymouth’s Waterfront Writers.

Hugh Janes

Hugh Janes, film maker

A movie made in Plymouth had its premiere in the city in 2022. The Strange Case of the Snail in a Bottle is the second film in a series entitled The Justice Files, conceived and created by Plymouth film company Time-Lock Productions and focusing on famous landmark legal cases that have become enshrined in the common law of more than 60 countries.

The film had its first public screening on November 9 in the Jill Craigie Cinema, at the University of Plymouth Time-Lock Productions is the same film company which made the 2021 production Mrs Carlill v Carbolic Smokeball and the new movie again used Plymouth- or Devon-based actors and crew and is based on a landmark legal case.

The main Time-Lock team was writer/director Hugh Janes, co-director/Editor Rob Giles and producer/legal advisor Hugo de Rijke,. Hugh has written more than 60 stage plays and screenplays. He has had his plays Beyond the Wall and Conversations with a Stranger produced by the BBC. His screenplays included All at Sea, which was filmed and starred Lauren Bacall and Brian Cox, and Curse of the Phoenix, winner of Best Supernatural Film at the Houston Film Festival.

His screenplay for Even Break was filmed and starred Nigel Planer and Paul Nicholas, the latter also appearing in Theatre Royal Plymouth’s staging of Hugh’s play The Haunting. He co-founded RSH Films Ltd in 2010.

Sue Bown

Sue Brown, painter and printmaker, with Dr Stephen Felmingham, pro-VC at Arts University Plymouth

Sue is a painter and printmaker whose practice is an embodied enquiry into movement and the body in space. Using gestural mark making and layering, she explores space and place with colour, scale and materiality as important as the physicality of moving paint on a surface.

Sue’s latest body of work is based on geometrical shapes and colour relationships and she uses the interplay of these to amplify her message. Sue uses printmaking to inform painting and vice versa, seeking to create a hybridity between the processes.

Sue joined Arts University Plymouth in 2015 as part of the extended BA cohort in painting, drawing and printmaking and in 2022 won the Pro-Vice Chancellor’s Commendation Award, the first award of its kind for Arts University Plymouth.

The Pro-Vice Chancellor’s Commendation award recognises work of outstanding quality, judged on the work exhibited in the graduate shows.

Matt Carbery

Matt Carbery, poet, musician and academic

Matt Carbery has got a Phd, has lectured in creative writing at more than one university, and wrote a book with the word “phenomenology” in the title. He’s also a musician who has played in rock bands, earns a living teaching English at a Plymouth secondary school and at just 33 years old says he is “probably the longest serving, youngest member” at Plymouth’s CrossCountry Writers.

Matt obtained his Phd from the University of Kent and had taught there and at the University of Plymouth, edited the EPIZOOTICS! literary mag, and had his poetry published in journals such as Tears in the Fence, Blackbox Manifold, CTRL+ALT+DEL, Otoliths, Stride and Dead King Magazine.

His Phd was published by the leading Palgrave Macmillan imprint as the book Phenomenology and the Late Twentieth-Century American Long Poem, and Matt is an expert in US poetry from the likes of James Shchuyler, Susan Howe, Charles Olson.

Melisande Fitzsimons

Two languages... Melisande Fitzsimons
Melisande Fitzsimons, poet

Plymouth poet Melisande Fitzsimons hasn’t so much written a postcard as a whole book of them. The French-born writer’s collection is an ingenious set of 29 prose poems matched to the images on vintage postcards.

Melisande, a familiar face on Plymouth’s literary circuit, has had many poems published before, in French and English, and two collections previously, but Life Here is Full of Tomorrows is somewhat different. The short prose poems are matched to 29 vintage postcards, and the book is an affectionate exploration of her relationship to Britain, its customs and the English language. The book, published by Nottingham-based Leafe Press, has been described as “a tantalising potpourri of the human condition.”

Melisande’s previous collection, A Language of Spies, came out in 2020 and was her first written entirely in English. Published by Ashburton-based Crafty Little Press, and edited by Lucy Lepchani, the collection contained 19 pieces with titles such as Mermaid, Migrants and I Love Disney.

Melisande had a poetry collection published in France in 2017, with images from conceptual artist Mathieu Ducournau, but it was solely written in French. She has also had poems published in the journals Epizootics and the Broadsheet, is a regular face at Plymouth and South West literary events and has read at the Language Club, Crosscountry Writers and other gatherings including the PlymLit festival.

Russell Cleave

Russell Cleave, film maker

Expert technical demonstrators at Arts University Plymouth spent non-work time creating Solitude and Collaboration: The Artist Dichotomy, a short film set in a handmade 1970s caravan and an accompanying making-of documentary, to showcase some of the breadth and depth of technical skill, expertise, equipment and resources on offer in the UK’s newest arts university.

The movie was created by technical demonstrators and workshop coordinators from different specialisms across the university, including Harrison Newman, Kathryn Hays, Matt Holmes, Aaron Prout, Pip Murphy, Kerry Brosnan, Sophie Minshall, Fiona Lloyd, Beth De Tisi, Lisa Roberts, Neil Jones, Amber Thorpe, Sarah Court, May Watts, Tracey Ormston, India Ritchie, Ben Mundy, Norman Buchan and Oliver Curtis. Most academics and technical support staff at Arts University Plymouth are practising artists in their own right and live in and around the city.

The short film, which takes inspiration from the works of Wes Anderson and 1970s period nostalgia, is set within a caravan on Plymouth Hoe. Russell Cleave worked as director of photography on the film.

Russell is a light and sound practitioner and award-winning filmmaker who has directed numerous music videos premiered in mainstream and independent music publications, including Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, The Independent, The Guardian and Vevo. He is also an Arts University Plymouth BA (Hons) Film alumni.

Margaret Corvid

Margaret Corvid, poet

She was well known as a city councillor but now Margaret Corvid is better known as one of Plymouth’s premier poets and launch her largest poetry collection last summer. Margaret’s Singing in the Dark Times was published by Patrician Press as a collection of “timely and personal” poems, often in traditional styles, on topics ranging from politics to love to trauma.

Margaret served the Drake Ward as a Labour councillor from 2018 to 2022. And during that time she has been active on the Plymouth poetry scene and has appeared at the Language Club, CrossCountry Writers and events organised by WonderZoo.

She has worked as a copywriter and journalist, and has been published in the Guardian, New Statesman, Cosmopolitan and Narratively.

Her poems have appeared in Red Wedge and in anthologies published by Plymouth’s WonderZoo. The poem Siena, which opens Margaret’s new collection, also appeared in CoronaVerses: Poems from the Pandemic.

She is a member of Etherpoems digital poetry collective and Patrician Press describes her poetry as “accomplished and interesting” and her collection displays “variety and exuberance”, adding that: “She shows confidence, innovation and intelligibility and the poems have a confident and easy structure.”

Norman Jope

Collections... Norman Jope
Norman Jope, poet

Norman Jope, a co-coordinator of Plymouth Language Club, has published six full-length collections of poetry, five in English and one in Hungarian translation, including The Book of Bells and Candles and Aphinar (Waterloo) and most recently The Rest of the World (Shearsman). He has also edited In the Presence of Sharks, an anthology of new poetry from Plymouth (Phlebas), and a book of critical essays on the work of the poet Richard Berengarten (Salt and Shearsman).

Norman’s latest collection is called The Rest of the World and has an international theme, with pieces about the Kenya, Moldova, Brazil, USA, Norway and more. But there are also poems which come from closer to home, including Plymouth and its newspaper.

“There’s a sequence about Plymouth called A Citizen’s Diary,” said Norman. “It was the title of a column that used to be in The Herald in the 1960s. I read it as a child. It was about council matters.”

Norman, who works at Plymouth Marjon University, released his new collection with a reading alongside some other leading lights in the city’s literary scene at one of the city’s other seats of higher learning: the University of Plymouth.

Kate Williams

Kate Williams, weaver

Kate Williams, an MA fine art student from Arts University Plymouth, exhibited at the Masters Summer Show 2022 in September 2022 and completed the first MA Residency at Southcombe Barn earlier in the year, creating new work at the new arts, nature and wellbeing retreat space located in Widecombe-in-the Moor, Dartmoor.

Kate was jointly selected for the first iteration of the new residency by academics from the university and Vashti Casinelli, co-founder of Southcombe Barn. Kate is a highly skilled weaver with a studio at Mount Edgcumbe. Working primarily with the constraints of using a traditional mechanical dobby loom, Kate challenges herself to find ways to convert her ideas into lively woven wall hangings of rich texture with plenty of colours.

Nick Ingram

Nick Ingram, poet, publisher and event organiser

The first volume of a new periodical containing some of Plymouth’s best known - and up and coming - writers hit the shelves in 2022 and more editions are to follow. The new Gin City: Writing from Plymouth publication is an initiative bringing together work from established and emerging creatives, writers, and artists, providing a platform for their work. And Gin City Publications also started organising events, readings and performances at a venue in Plymouth, based around the publications.

Plymouth poet Nick Ingram is one of the writers involved in the project and said the debut volume contained poetry and prose from a diverse grass roots creative scene that “bubbles away” in Plymouth, and which stretches from Thom Boulton, former Plymouth city laureate; to Margaret Corvid, Merris Longstaff, Robin Oliver, Jackie Wacha, and to “the satiric pen” of Sam Richards. There other writers included too and also Illustrations and cover art by Gabi Marcellus-Temple.

Nick returned to the city’s literary scene in 2021 after battling psychosis. Prior to that he had been a well-known face on the city’s cultural scene, but found himself suffering from mental illness following the death of his mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease. He bravely admits to being diagnosed with a psychosis which resulted in him hearing voices, and underwent therapy which resolved his issues. In 2021 he produced new work which combines poetry with art.

He crafted a “word collage” installation which went on display in Plymouth city centre as part of the Plymouth Artists Together Lockdown Gallery. Until his illness, Nick had been active on the Plymouth literary scene for several years, regularly appearing at open mic and performance events, including at the PlymLit literary festivals, and in 2016 saw his poetry collection Some Notes From a Small Dent of an English City published to acclaim by Beyond the Attic. That followed an initial “philosophy and prose” collection, in 2014, called Dionysus Williams and Other South West Observations.