Isabelle Baafi is the Reviews Editor at Poetry London. Her debut pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. Her writing has been published in the TLS, The Poetry Review, The London Magazine, Aesthetica Magazine, bath magg, and elsewhere. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and an Obsidian Foundation Fellow.
Leo Boix is a Latinx-British poet and translator. He is the author of Ballad of a Happy Immigrant (Chatto & Windus, 2021), a PBS Wild Card Choice. His second collection, Southernmost: Sonnets, is forthcoming with Chatto & Windus in June, 2025. Boix is the editor and translator of Hemisferio Cuir: Young Queer Poets from Latin America, which will be published by Fourteen Poems in March of 2025. He is a fellow of The Complete Works Program and co-director of Un Nuevo Sol, a scheme to nurture new Latinx writers. Boix won the Bart Wolffe Poetry Award, the Keats-Shelley Prize, a PEN Award, and The Society of Authors’ Foundation & K. Blundell Trust Award.
David Floyd lives in London and is Managing Director of Social Spider CIC. His pamphlets are Protest (Hearing Eye, 2011) and War in the Playground (Hearing Eye, 2003).
Ella Frears is a poet and artist originally from Cornwall, now based in London. Her debut collection Shine, Darling (Offord Road Books, 2020) was a Poetry Book Society recommendation and was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.
Susannah Hart's debut collection Out of True won the Live Canon First Collection Prize in 2018. She won first prize in the 2019 National Poetry Competition and was commended in both the 2020 and 2022 competitions. Susannah has been a trustee of Magma since 2015.
Lisa Kelly is half Danish and has single-sided deafness from childhood mumps. Her first collection, A Map Towards Fluency (Carcanet 2019), was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize 2021. Her second collection, The House of the Interpreter (Carcanet 2023), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is learning British Sign Language and has a Signature level 6 qualification. She is co-editor of What Meets the Eye? The Deaf Perspective (Arachne Press 2021).
Aoife Lyall is the author of Mother, Nature (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), shortlisted for the Scottish First Book Award 2021. In 2020, she was awarded National Lottery funding through Creative Scotland to write her second poetry collection, The Day Before (Bloodaxe Books, 2024). Her work focuses on motherhood, lockdown, and emigration.
Fiona Moore’s first collection The Distal Point (HappenStance) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the 2019 T S Eliot and Seamus Heaney Prizes. She has co-edited Magmas on Climate Change and Islands. Her second book is a long eco-poem, Okapi (Blue Diode, 2024).
Cheryl Moskowitz is a US born UK based poet, translator and novelist. Trained in dramatherapy and psychodynamic counselling she runs writing projects in various health-care, educational and community settings. Her most recent publication is the pamphlet Maternal Impression published by Against the Grain Poetry Press 2021.
Helen, a founder member of the Magma team, now lives in Fife. After an MFA in Creative Writing at St Andrews, her pamphlet, Briar Mouth, was published by Happenstance in 2018. She is a fundraiser for a Scottish charity supporting families who care for children who need help with speech, language and communication. Helen takes the lead for Magma on privacy and data protection.
Remembered with love, gratitude and respect. Gboyega Odubanjo (1996–2023) was born and raised in East London. He was the author of three poetry pamphlets: While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press), Two stops short of Barking (The Alternative School of Economics) and Aunty Uncle Poems (The Poetry Business/New Poets List), winner of the Michael Marks Poetry Award and an Eric Gregory Award. A Barbican Young Poet alumnus, Odubanjo was an editor at bath magg journal and Bad Betty Press, co-chair of Magma and a member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, after which he later became a Roundhouse Resident Artist. He was a creative writing tutor on the Creative Future IMPART programme, supporting writers from underrepresented backgrounds. His UK garage single ‘LDN GRLS’ with Love Remain is out with the Sony Music UK label, Black Butter Records. The Gboyega Odubanjo Foundation for low-income Black writers was established in 2023 to honour his legacy.
Stav Poleg’s debut poetry collection, The City (Carcanet, 2022) was chosen for the Financial Times' Best Summer Books 2022, and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First Collection, 2023. Her second collection is forthcoming from Carcanet in Autumn 2025. Her poetry has appeared on both sides of the Atlantic, in The New Yorker, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review. Her graphic-novel installation, Dear Penelope, created with artist Laura Gressani, was acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
Selina Rodrigues’ poetry collections are The Visitors (Wild Pressed Books) and Ferocious (Smokestack). She is an experienced facilitator and poet-in-residence and co-hosts the Shuffle at The Poetry Cafe. Selina has a particular interest and passion for diversity and believes creativity exists in all people and places.
Laurie Smith helped start Magma in 1994, has edited 10 issues, been Chair and is now Company Secretary. He advises on the Let's Think in English programme at King's College London and teaches literature at the City Lit, central London.
Paul Stephenson’s debut collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in 2023 and was shortlisted for Lambda Literary Award and the Polari Prize. He co-edited the ‘Europe’ issue of Magma and helps programme Poetry in Aldeburgh. He lives between Brussels and Cambridge.
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