Digital Residencies with The Poetry Business

Here at Hive, we’re very excited to announce we’ve teamed up again with northern nurturers and purveyors of fine contemporary poetry, The Poetry Business, as part of their Digital Residencies Programme. 

This will see Hive young poets, Maia Brown, Beth Davies and Luke Worthy each undertaking a one-month digital residency on The Poetry Business website, producing blogs, media clips and creative content delving into their own individual poetry interests. The Residencies will take place from May to July 2022 and we really can’t wait to see what they get up to!

Residencies: Maia Brown (May), Beth Davies (June), Luke Worthy (July)

The Poetry Business is a publisher and writer development agency with a strong reputation for discovering, developing and publishing outstanding new poets. They publish books, pamphlets and audio under the Smith/Doorstop imprint, and new imprint The New Poets List. They also publish literary magazine The North, and run Writing Days, the Writing School, the International Book and Pamphlet Competition, the New Poets Prize (for poets aged 17 to 24), and these digital poetry residencies. www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

Maia Brown is a poet studying Anthropology, Archaeology and Art History at UEA. She is an alumnus of Doncaster Young Writers and a member of the Writing Squad and Hive Poetry. Maia’s work has been published in journals including Matter and Push magazine, and Hive anthologies Halfway Smile and Surfing the Twilight. In 2020, she won second prize in the Engaging Images competition, and third prize in the Hive writing competition 2021. Maia has been commissioned to write poems for various projects including Ripples of Hope Festival for human rights in 2021, and the Birdlife podcast 2019. She’s delivered gallery talks, judged children’s poetry competitions, run creative writing workshops for young and read her work at various events including Sheaf Poetry Festival. 

“I like exploring different forms and using found text scavenged from the world to influence my work. These include museum labels, badly translated washing instructions and lyrics I’ve heard in dreams. Subject wise, I’m interested in everything from art and science to history and the natural world. Because of this, I’m likely to work with a few different ideas, so watch this space!” Maia Brown

Beth Davies (she/her) is an emerging poet based in Sheffield and a member of Hive Poetry Collective. Her poetry has been published in Poetry Wales, Atrium, Rust + Moth, and The Kindling, as well as in anthologies such as Candlestick Press’ Ten Poems about Flowers and Valley Press’ Verse Matters. She won second place in the 2021 Dead Cat Poetry Prize and was shortlisted in the 2021 New Poets Prize. She is a graduate of Sheffield Young Writers, The Writing Squad and of Durham University Slam Team. More information about her work can be found at bethdaviespoet.wordpress.com

“My poems tend to arise from musing on memories and moments from my own life, and I’m excited to play with those musings in a new way through combining prose and poetry during my online residency.” Beth Davies

Luke Worthy is a poet and fiction writer from Sheffield based in Amsterdam. His work has been published in various journals and anthologies including Poetry Wales, Youth Word Up, Halfway Smile (2018) and Surfing the Twilight (2019). His work was shortlisted for the 2021 New Poet’s Prize. In 2019, he was shortlisted in the Street Cake Experimental Writing Prize, and a featured poet in Eelyn Lee’s Britishness documentary. Luke is an alumnus of Sheffield Young Writers and a member of Hive’s Poetry Collective. He studies literature in Amsterdam and when he’s not writing, turns pop-culture figures into clay slugs.

“I love to write poems that travel through time as much as they travel through space. I’m drawn to everything that is queer in the world, and everything that is lost. I want to shine a spotlight on the things people don’t think twice about – I want to show how much they matter.” Luke Worthy