Patrick Corbett

Patrick Corbett was a professional and academic geologist for many years before taking up poetry and is now exploring the geopoetic appreciation and expression of the earth, combining technical expertise in the widening field of science communication through poetry. Patrick hosted Alyson Hallett’s residency at Heriot-Watt University in 2019 as University Poet, and co-edited Earth Lines: Geopoetry and Geopoetics published by the Edinburgh Geological Society in 2021.  He has published poems in The European, Stravaig, Conslience, Leaves and was a Saltire Poetry Prize judge in 2021 and 2022.  He is a board member of the Scottish Poetry Library, the Edinburgh School of Poets, the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics and the Purbeck Stone Centre. He is a Chartered Geologist, Chartered Scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 

Hugh McMillan

Hugh McMillan is a poet from South West Scotland. His work has been published widely in Scotland and beyond, and he has won various prizes, most recently the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award in 2017 for Sheep Penned, published by Roncadora; he won the same award in 2009 for Postcards from the Hedge. In 2021 two new collections were published by Luath Press, ‘Haphazardly in the Starless Night’ and ‘Whit If? Poems on Scottish History.  

In 2017 he was writer in residence at the Harvard Summer School.  In 2020 he was chosen as one of four ‘Poetry Champions’ for Scotland by the Scottish Poetry Library, to seek out and commission new work. Recently he was given the role as editor of ‘Best Scottish Poems’ for 2021 and was commissioned by the Wigtown Book Festival to write a contemporary poem inspired by the classic ‘Brownie of Blednoch by William Nicholson.  

His website is at https://www.hughmcmillanwriter.co.uk/ 

Dr Anne Pia

Dr. Anne Pia (born in 1949) lives in Edinburgh. She is the grandchild of Italian immigrants and was raised surrounded by the culture, traditions and dialect of southern Italy. She is a professional linguist and translator. Anne attended St Margaret’s Convent School from 1954 until 1967. She graduated from Edinburgh University with a joint Honours degree in French and Italian, and a Dip.Ed and began her teaching career in Glasgow. She subsequently took up a number of senior leadership and national roles in both the schools and adult education sectors, and retired from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate in 2009, having gained a PhD from Edinburgh University in 2008, while still in post. 

In 2011, Anne turned her attention to writing and one of her first poems, Waiting for the Film was selected for the Stanza International Poetry Festival Masterclass in 2012. Her poems and essays have been widely published online and in The Blue Nib, Northwords Now, Poetry Scotland, Dreich, Lunar Poetry, The Fat Damsel, London’s South Bank Poetry and others.  

Anne Pia’s creative memoir Language of My Choosing was shortlisted for the Saltire Award for Best New Book of 2017. In 2018, Anne was awarded the Premio Flaiano Italianistica: La Cultura Italiana nel Mondo.The Italian translation Ho Scelto La Mia Lingua was published in 2018 together with her first poetry collection, Transitory. She is a winner of the Crawford Gallery, Cork, Flash Fiction Competition 2021.  

Keeping Away The Spiders; Essays on Breaching Barriers was published in November 2020 by Luath Press, and her second poetry collection The Sweetness of Demons with translations from French, was published by Vagabond Voices in April 2021on the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth. She has been invited to the Stanza International Poetry Festival, the Dundee Literary Festival, the Paisley Book Festival and is a regular contributor to poetry and literary gatherings in Edinburgh and more widely in Scotland. In 2018 she was a guest lecturer at the British Institute in Florence,  

Anne continues to have a lively interest in the work of Dante, Petrarch, DH Lawrence, John Donne, Wordsworth, Auden and Keats. Besides her particular love of feminist Middle Eastern writing, such as Elif Shafak, other key influences in her work have been the poetry of Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Norman MacCaig, Andrew Greig, Helen Dunmore, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Kathleen Jamie and rupi kaur; the songs of Georges Moustaki and Georges Brassens; and the prose of John Muir, Elena Ferrante, Joseph Conrad and Karl One Knausgaard.

Ian Spring

Dr Ian Spring is a writer, a cultural historian and a publisher. He lives in Perth.