Now We Are Five

Notes on Contributors Rose Anderson is a lifelong poetry junkie living in Chapel Allerton, Leeds.

She is slowly recovering after many years of illness, rediscovering in her forties all the ordinary-extraordinary things she hasn’t done since her twenties, from hanging out the washing to visiting the seaside. Her poetry pamphlet, Falling Upwards Through the Night was first published in 2002 and she is hoping to start putting together a new collection before too long.

Darrell Barnes read Modern Languages at St Edmund Hall and joined Barclays Bank DCO after leaving university. He worked in East Africa, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and other places beyond Ultima Thule before concluding that the rewards of work were vastly inferior to the those of working in the voluntary sector in various capacities. He lives in Putney where he once rowed - alas, no longer.

Sonja Benskin Mesher lives in Llanelltyd, Wales. She is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer. A Small Life, her chapbook of poetry and art, was published and distributed by take-it-to-the-street-poetry.

David Braund lives in Burgess Hill, Sussex. He studied Geography at St Edmund Hall, and is now a retired computer software consultant. He has contributed to the Oxford Magazine.

Alexander Bridge is currently reading English at St Edmund Hall. He runs Teddy Hall Writers and is a facilitator on the Hall Writer’s Forum. He edits poetry for the Oxford Review of Books, the Teddy Hall Anthology and The Gallery, and has had a few poems published in Oxford student publications. He has no idea what he’s going to do with the rest of his life, but doesn’t really want to do anything in particular.

Tony Brignull joined an insurance company at the age of seventeen, then did National Service with the RAF in Germany 1956 - 58. After a spell as a trainee teacher in Dalston, he worked in the advertising industry, responsible for successful campaigns such as Parker, Birds Eye and Cinzano. After retirement in 1996 he wrote poetry and stories, winning a couple of national contests and one international competition; and in 2002 he went to St Edmund Hall to read English, followed by an MA at King’s College London, specialising in Life Writing.

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