About
4Word is an independent poetry press; a collaboration of poets, conceived to publish and promote fresh, new work which both engages and provokes.
Lesley Quayle
Lesley Quayle was born in Fife. Daughter of a naval officer, she moved all over Britain, attending eight different schools in six different counties, always returning to the family home in Glasgow whilst her father was abroad on long tours of duty. She finally arrived in Yorkshire in 1982, along with her veterinary surgeon husband, four children, dogs, cats, assorted small creatures and a variety of musical instruments. Here she stayed, running a small farm, rearing Herdwick sheep, chickens, goats and a flock of geese, happily overrun by children, pets and livestock.
Always an inveterate scribbler, Lesley only began submitting work for publication in 1996, when she won the BBC Wildlife Magazine Poet of the Year competition with her poem The Herdwick Ram. Her work has appeared widely in poetry magazines, including the Rialto, Tears in the Fence and The North, also The Spectator, Morning Star, Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Journal, local radio and BBC Radio 4. Her poem Termination was nominated for a Forward Prize. In 2010 her pamphlet Songs For Lesser Gods, featuring the prizewinning sonnet sequence of the same title, was published by erbacce and in 2013 Indigo Dreams published her collection Sessions. She was co-editor of Aireings, a Leeds based poetry magazine, for ten years, along with Linda Marshall, and is a member of Pennine Poets. She is also a folk/blues singer, having recently retired to a remote part of rural Dorset, where she and her husband organise concerts and run a local folk club.
If you would like to know more about Lesley, read the Wombwell Rainbow interview with Paul Brookes … Here
Stella Wulf
Stella Wulf is from Lancashire but moved to North Wales at the age of eight. In 1980 she and her husband bought a derelict water mill close to the Denbigh Moors, and moved in with their two small children. Having no money they undertook the entire renovation themselves, finishing the work some twenty years later.
Stella has tried her hand at many things including, waitressing, furniture restoration, buyer for a city centre music store, and running her own green grocery shop. She also sang backing in an R&B band in which her husband played guitar. In 1990 she returned to art school to study Fashion and Textiles, and Interior Design, qualifying as an Interior Designer in 1994. In 2000 she and her husband bought a large derelict property at the foot of the Pyrenees in S W France, living in the ruins and tackling one room at a time. Twenty years on they are banging in the last nail and working on plans for a new-build project.
Despite a lifelong love of poetry, Stella came to writing late in life in an epiphanic moment whilst painting doors. It became an obsession fuelled by Jo Bell’s 52 group, culminating in a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing, from Lancaster University.
Her work has been widely published in journals such as Obsessed With Pipework, The High Window, Riggwelter, Prole, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Sentinel Quarterly (placed third in comp 2013), and many others. Her work has appeared in several anthologies including, The Very Best of 52, three drops from a cauldron, Clear Poetry, and #MeToo.
If you would like to know more about Stella, read the Wombwell Rainbow interview with Paul Brookes … Here