John Foggin
John Foggin lives in Ossett, West Yorkshire. He helps to organise The Puzzle Hall Poets in Sowerby Bridge, and writes a weekly poetry blog: the great fogginzo’s cobweb (www.johnfoggin.wordpress.com).
Steve Ely
Steve Ely has published two books of poetry, Englaland (Smokestack Books, 2015) and Oswald’s Book of Hours (Smokestack Books, 2013).
He’s also published a novel, Ratmen (Blackheath Books, 2012), and a biographical work,
Ted Hughes’s South Yorkshire: Made in Mexborough (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015)
Peter Riley
Peter Riley recently retired to Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, after living for 28 years in Cambridge. He has been a teacher, lecturer, bookseller, bus conductor, and a few other things.
He is the author of fifteen books of poetry, and some of prose concerning travel and music.
His most recent books are The Glacial Stairway (Carcanet 2011) and a book-length poem, Due North (Shearsman 2015) which was shortlisted for the Forward Best Collection Prize in 2015.
Mark Hinchliffe
Mark Hinchcliffe has been writing poetry since he was sixteen. He was inspired to read poetry, and write his own poems, after his English teacher played a recording of Ted Hughes
Mark has been involved with the Albert poets in Huddersfield for nearly twenty years, reading there regularly, and also organising readings
He corresponded with Ted Hughes, who took an interest in his poetry. This led to Mark’s involvement in The Elmet Trust, of which he is a director.
John Duffy
John Duffy has worked as a civil servant, social worker, community worker, childminder and bibliotherapist. And he spent several years at home tending to his children and housework, a role he describes as ‘husbandry’.
A native Glaswegian, he moved to Huddersfield (via London) and through a Kirklees PoetryWorkshop met the three other writers who founded the Albert Poets in 1993. The group continues to run workshops in various places and readings in The Albert (the pub nearest Huddersfield Library).
Michael Haslam
Michael Haslam has become a glossographer of the upper Calder Valley through almost 50 years of wandering its cloughs and groughs, its royds and lumbs.
He is absorbed in and by the language and history of its terrain. In these ‘pastorals of the common man’ the musicality and muscularity of his words carry this exuberance from the landscape to the page. And for Haslam, like Harrison, ‘matter’ and ‘water’ can be a full-rhyme.
Stephanie Bowgett

Neil Clarkson is a long-standing member of the Albert Poets in Huddersfield, where he is based, following sojourns in London, Manchester and Leeds.
He has been published in magazines including Pennine Platform, the Black Horse, Obsessed by Pipework and has won or been a prize-winner in competitions such as the Adoption Matters North-West and Didsbury Arts Festival.
