Four London Poets

Wendy French, Brett Van Toen, Agnes Meadows and Richard Rickford. Genuinely moving, witty and interesting work from four of London's most accomplished poets.

Wendy French won the Hippocrates Poetry and Medicine Prize and has long combined poetry with work in healthcare. She facilitates writing work for patients with cancer, mental illness and aphasia and dysphasia, helping them to recover language through poetry. Wendy has published two collections, Splintering the Dark, and surely you know this, two chapbooks, a collaboration, Born in the NHS, and has co-edited three books from hospital schools. She is currently editing a book for the Cardiovascular Research Trust.

Brett Van Toen, a philosophy graduate, worked variously in Marketing, Software Engineering, Civil Engineering and Librarianship. He is both poet and poetry promoter, with strong views on the dangers of poetry being narrow, obscure and elitist. For three years he was involved in Shadowork, a collaborative project which undertook performance tours around the UK. Brett has published widely and has won or been short listed for a number prizes.

Agnes Meadows has worked as a journalist, fund raiser, promoter and workshop facilitator. She has lived and worked around the world: Mexico, the Philippines, Australia, Turkey, the West Bank, Gaza, Singapore, and has read in New York, Israel, Spain, Poland, Austin and Iraq. For ten years she has hosted Loose Muse, London's premiere event for women writers. Her books are "You and Me", "Quantum Love", "Woman", "At Damascus Gate on Good Friday" and "This One Is For You".

Richard Rickford has spent all his life in London apart from studying history at Exeter University. History, particularly that of modern Russia (he visited in 1989) and the Byzantine period, remains a strong interest. He is Research Assistant at Missing People – a charity that provides a lifeline for the missing and vulnerable. Richard has been published in several magazines. He was chair of Richmond Writers and now co-hosts the monthly event Sweet Thursday.