Lisa Kelly has single-sided deafness. She is also half Danish. She is learning British Sign Language (BSL) at Level 6. Her pamphlet, Philip Levine’s Good Ear, which explores her deafness, is available from Stonewood Press. Her most recent pamphlet, From the IKEA Back Catalogue, is published by New Walk Editions, and Bloodhound is published by Hearing Eye. She is a regular host of poetry evenings at the Torriano Meeting House, London. She has a Masters, with Distinction, in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and teaches creative writing and poetry in performance at the Torriano Meeting House. Lisa is a board member of Magma Poetry, and the current Chair. She co-edited issue 63, ‘The Conversation Issue’ with Susannah Hart; issue 69, ‘The Deaf Issue’ with Raymond Antrobus; issue 83, ‘The Solitude Issue’ with Isabelle Baafi and Ilya Kaminsky; and issue 90, ‘The Grassroots Issue’ with Patrizia Longhitano. She has been shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize on the theme of ‘Language’, four times for the Bridport Prize, longlisted for the National Poetry Competition in 2016, 2018 and 2020; and won the 2016 University of Lancaster (MA) ‘Reading’ Prize. In 2019, she read at Poetry International, Southbank Centre for d/Deaf Republic: Poets on Deafness; and for Poetry in Adleburgh at the Jubilee Hall for ‘The Europeans – British, Danish & Dutch Poets’. In 2021, she took part in StAnza Poetry Festival and the John Hewitt International Summer School. Lisa co-edited with Sophie Stone, What Meets the Eye, an anthology of poetry and short fiction by UK Deaf, deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers for Arachne Press.

poetry

Lisa’s poems have been published in various magazines, including PN Review, New Walk Magazine, The Spectator, South Bank Poetry, The Rialto, Ambit, Prole, Urthona, Brittle Star and Tears in the Fence. Online publications include Well Versed, And Other Poems, Poems in Which, Antiphon and Long Exposure. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Asterism (Laudanum Publishing); Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press); and Spark: Poetry and Art Inspired by the Novels of Muriel Spark (Blue Diode Press). A selection of her poems are featured in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII anthology. Her debut collection, A Map Towards Fluency, was published by Carcanet, June 2019 and shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize 2021. Her second collection, The House of the Interpreter, was published by Carcanet, April 2023 and is a Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation. A poem from this collection was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2023. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Forward Prizes for Poetry for Best Single Poem – Written.