About the Friday Poem”
The Friday Poem
We post reviews of poetry collections and features about poetry onto our Substack, plus (usually) a poem selected from the collection under discussion. If you subscribe, this comes straight into your inbox ready for you to enjoy with your Friday morning coffee and cake / tea and biscuits / green juice and beansprout salad. On the front page of the website you can see a random selection from our Archive – refresh the page for more.
Subscribe to The Friday Poem here.
Who are we?
Hilary Menos
Editor
Hilary Menos won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2010 with Berg (Seren, 2009). Her second collection is Red Devon (Seren, 2013). Her pamphlet, Human Tissue (Smith|Doorstop, 2020), won The Poetry Business International Book & Pamphlet Competition 2019. Her newest pamphlet is Fear of Forks (HappenStance, 2022). She has worked as a student union organiser, journalist, food reviewer, arts critic, organic farmer, script overseer and dramaturge.
Andy Brodie
Web designer and content manager
Andy Brodie toured the world for fifteen years as co-founder and guitarist of legendary show band The Rhythm Doctors, and now plays with Tarn-based rock and roll band Rocket81 and Americana cover band The Vagabond Three. He was a founder member and director of Exeter-based children’s theatre company Quirk Theatre, and has also worked as a ship agent, a boat builder, a yacht skipper in Greece, an actor with Kneehigh Theatre, and an organic farmer.
Helena Nelson
Consulting Editor
Helena Nelson is a poet, critic, publisher and the founding editor of HappenStance Press and Sphinx Review. Her first collection, Starlight on Water (Rialto, 2003), was a Jerwood / Aldeburgh First Collection winner. Her second was Plot and Counterplot (Shoestring, 2010). She also writes and publishes light verse, including Down With Poetry! (HappenStance, 2016) and Branded (Red Squirrel, 2019). Her most recent collection is PEARLS: The Complete Mr & Mrs Philpott Poems (HappenStance, 2022).
Bruno Cooke
Spoken Word Editor
Bruno Cooke studied Comparative Literature at Queen Mary College and an MA in global journalism at Sheffield University. He has lived in France, China, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, working as a writer, educator, and occasional chef, and has worked as a freelance journalist, primarily for GRV Media, since 2019. He has written one novel (Reveries), four plays and two feature screenplays. He likes, among other things: black and white Japanese films, pub quizzes, fermentation and baklava. Bruno Cooke’s website is at onurbicycle.com.