Tutor: Lydia Fulleylove

Lydia has a wide experience of facilitating workshops in the community with both new and experienced writers. She has worked in a range of settings, including schools, hospitals, prisons and local writing groups. She was Writer in Healthcare for the Healing Arts at St Mary's Hospital on the Isle of Wight (2000 - 2006) and she is writer in residence at HMP Isle of Wight. She is is currently co-leading Estuary an Arts Council funded cross arts project, working with artist Colin Riches. This is based on the western Yar Estuary and tracks the landscape through the seasons. High Tide Poets are involved in this project, taking part in cross arts workshops on site throughout 2011 and until February 2012.

Lydia received a Writer's Award from Arts Council England. Her poetry collection Notes on Sea and Land was published by HappenStance Press in July 2011. She was short listed for the Forward Prize Best Single Poem for her poem Night Drive in 2010.

She has published poetry, short stories, reviews and articles in magazines, newspapers and anthologies, including Mslexia, The Rialto, TES, The Guardian, and a range of literary magazines. She has also published creative writing and literacy materials for Nelson Thornes, David Fulton and for the Isle of Wight Education Directorate. She has a BA Honours in English, an MA in Education, a PGCE and a first class honours in Creative Writing.

Guide: Robin Ford

I started writing poetry at the absurdly advanced age of 56 – who says poetry is a young man's art? I think this was because I am bi-polar and I was put on a new regime of drugs which I am sure released my creative side. Since then my poems have appeared in a wide range of literary magazines and I have had a pamphlet sequence, 'After The Wound' and a first collection 'Never Quite Prepared For Light' published by Arrowhead Press. A second collection, 'On The Brink' was published in January 2010 by Cinnamon Press.

More on Robin...

Guide: Malcolm Taylor

I am under reconstruction at the moment.

Vidya Wolton

I originally trained as a scientist, graduating with a BSc(Hons) in Ecology in 1985. I then went on to teach at an Outdoor Education Centre on the Isle of Wight before returning to full-time education in 1990. I attended Portsmouth College of Art, Design and Further Education, where I completed a Foundation Year in Art and Design. My training continued at West Surrey College of Art and Design, where I specialised as a painter and have continued to practice, exhibiting on the Isle of Wight and in London. Works range from pure abstraction to themes from nature.

Joan Waddleton

A flitter-arse my neighbour calls me and she's right.  Too many interests - none of them followed through to any purpose.  Each day I get up determined to write and a dozen diversions crash through.  So I come here for ninety minutes each week for poetry to be forced onto centre stage.  I start the occasional poem but, longer term, I shy away from the commitment and the necessary exploration of the self that might turn my tumble of drafts into crafted poems and ultimately turn me into a poet.

Keith Wolton

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Mark Mordey

Born, went to school, went to college, went to sea, worked in a shipping office, worked in London, worked in Rotterdam, sacked for drunkenness, thrown out of Holland, worked in pubs, trained as a psychiatric nurse, dried out with Alcoholics Anonymous, got married, got divorced, play guitar, play poetry, live on a boat, fell in love - that's it folks, I am an evangelical Christian.

Jaye Imrie

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Ed Hinsley

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Michele Busk

Michele Busk was born and brought up in Hampshire. She was educated at a convent and after a year in an American High School she trained and worked in Oxford for five years. She has worked abroad in Bulgaria, France and the Middle East as a secretary/translator. After a spell working in London she moved to the Isle of Wight to devote more time to writing and art. She began writing poetry at school – "Poems come out of the blue from dreams and experiences. My life is my inspiration" she says. She enjoys painting, sailing, skiing, music and theatre.