Verbose

Verbose are excited to present a very special collaboration with Bad Betty Press. Bad Betty Press is an award-winning independent poetry publisher, and curator of live literature events taking place across the UK. London-born, Nottingham-based, Bad Betty was set up in 2017 with the aim of showcasing risk-taking poetry, supporting poets’ artistic development and celebrating stories less often told.
Bad Betty is a British Book Awards Small Press of the Year Finalist (2024, 2023), a Michael Marks Publishers’ Award winner (2022), and the parent of pamphlet imprint, Little Betty.

The featured poets are:

Alex Mazey
Alex Mazey won The Roy Fisher Prize from Keele University in 2018 and was the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award the following year. He is a contributing researcher for the international academic journal, Baudrillard Now and author of both Living in Disneyland and Sad Boy Aesthetics. Ghost Lives: Cursed Edition is his debut poetry collection.

Samantha Fain
Samantha (Sam) Fain is a poet from Indiana. Her chapbook Coughing Up Planets debuted with VA Press in March of 2021. Her microchapbook, sad horse music,debuted with The Daily Drunk in May of 2021. Catalina Ponce of Cicada Editora translated this work, and Música de Caballo Triste was published in 2023. Sam is the co-

editor of Kiss Your Darlings: A Taylor Swift Anthology, out with Olney Magazine in 2022. Are You There is her debut full-length collection. Find her at samanthafain.com.

Jasmine Cooray
Jasmine Cooray is a poet, psychotherapist and arts facilitator. She has been a Women of the World Festival speaker, BBC Performing Arts Fellow and Writer-in- Residence at the National University of Singapore, and has delivered creative writing projects for the Barbican, the Southbank Centre, First Story, the Arvon Foundation and the National Literacy Trust. Her pamphlet Everything We Don’t Say was published by Tall Lighthouse in 2009. ‘Inheritance, her first full collection, was published by Bad Betty in 2023 and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.’

P.A. BITEZ
Princess Arinola Adegbite, professionally known as P.A.BITEZ is a multi-award-winning British Jamaican-born Nigerian poet, performance artist, musician and filmmaker who combines social activism with surreal Afrofuturistic sensibilities. She is one of the Inaugural Poets of Colour Incubator poets (2023-2024), a member of Young Identity and The Writing Squad. She’s recieved numerous awards, including Manchester Young Creative of the Year 2021 (Culture Awards), United Nations Substainability Award 2022, A Castlefield Associates Prize 2022 and a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award 2023. BITEZ is also a Parable Momentum Filmmaker recipient 2023-2024. BITEZ protests discrimination to highlight the marginalised, alienated and imitated in all her works. Her poetry has been commissioned by BBC, Selfridges, Chanel and University of Cambridge. Her debut EP ‘Vintage Destiny’ garnered support from Factory International, Turtle Bay, Manchester Jazz Festival and Youth Music. Eat My Heart is her sophomore EP supported by MOBO Help Musicians.