ignitionpress launches poetry by Michaela Coplen and Jacob Anthony Ramírez

Join us for the launch of two new poetry pamphlets from the award-winning ignitionpress.

This event will feature readings from Michaela Coplen and Jacob Anthony Ramírez (via video), and special guests Joanna Ingham, Katie Byford, and Fathima Zahra.

The venue bar will be open during this event, and there will be an interval.

Michaela Coplen is an American poet and writer living in London. She was appointed as a US National Student Poet in 2013 and won the 2019 Troubadour International Poetry Prize and the 2020 York Poetry Prize. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including the 2020 Best New Poets anthology.

Jacob Anthony Ramírez, who will be appearing via a video recording, is a poet and educator from California. He is the recipient of Lancaster University’s Portfolio Prize where he earned his MA in CreativeWriting. His poetry appears in Haymarket Books’ The Breakbeat Poets - LatiNEXT, The Latino Book Review Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, and The Santa Fe Writers Project and elsewhere. He teaches in Sonoma County, California where he lives with his wife and two children.

Fathima Zahra is an Indian poet based in Essex. She is a Barbican Young Poet and a Roundhouse Poetry Collective alumna, and has won the Bridport Prize, the Wells Festival Young Poets Prize and the Asia HousePoetry Slam 2019. Her work has been published in Tentacular Magazine, and anthologised in SLAM! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This (Pan Macmillan), and A Letter, A Poem, A Home (Red River Press). She has also featured in BBC World News, The New Indian Express and Young Poets Network. Zahra's ignitionpress pamphlet, Sargam / Swargam, was published in 2021 and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Selection (Winter, 2021). Zahra was recently selected to feature in the latest Primers mentoring programme and anthology from Nine Arches Press.

Katie Byford is a poet and filmmaker. She studied Classics at Durham University, and is a former Barbican Young Poet and member of The Writing Squad. Katie won the 2020 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition(Open category), and her work has featured in Magma, Popshot, Modern Poetry in Translation, Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe Books), and She is Fierce (Macmillan). Her pamphlet He Said I Was a Peach was published by ignitionpress in 2021. Katie's debut short film as writer/director, You Look Fine, was awarded Best Writer at the BFI Future Film Festival 2022 and the Women’s Rights Prize at the Très Court Film Festival. Her second film, The Styx, has secured a project grant from Arts Council England. She has been selected as a member of the London Library's Emerging Writers Programme for 2022.

Joanna Ingham writes poetry and fiction. Her poems have been widely published in print and online. She has two pamphlets: Ovarium (The Emma Press, 2022) and Naming Bones (ignitionpress, 2019). She won the Paper Swans Press Single Poem Competition 2020 and her first full collection was shortlisted in Live Canon’s 2021 Collection Competition. Joanna is represented by Hardman & Swainson and is the recipient of a Developing Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England.