Alasdair Paterson recently returned to writing after a 20 year gap. Collections in the mid-1980s included The Floating World (Pig Press) and Brief Lives (Oasis Books). He is now retired after a career in academic libraries and is living in Exeter. These poems in Shadowtrain are from a developing collection entitled Noctivagator, a medieval legal term for a night wanderer, a walker by night, and someone generally up to no good.

Born in 1942, John Welch lives in London. His Collected Poems have just appeared from Shearsman Books, together with a prose 'memoir', Dreaming Arrival.

Catherine Hales lives in Berlin and works as a freelance translator. Her poetry and translations have been published in many print and online magazines. She co-edits Bordercrossing Berlin magazine and co-organises the Berlin Poetry Hearings festival. Her pamphlet out of mind appeared in 2006.

Paul Sutton's poems and reviews have appeared in various British and US magazines, including: Stride; Planet; Exaltations & Difficulties; Fire; The Journal; The Reater; Vox. A collection, Broadsheet Asphyxia, was published by Sam Smith's Original Plus in April 2003 and work will be appearing in Rupert Loydell's forthcoming Manifesto anthology from Salt.

Gareth Durasow is a West Yorkshire-based performance poet and playwright, with poetry soon to be published in Pennine Ink.

David Caddy’s latest books are Man in Black (Penned In The Margins 2007) and London: City of Words (Blue Island 2006). He edits Tears in the Fence, an international literary magazine, and presents So Here We Are: Poetic Letters from England monthly on MiPOradio and at http://davidcaddy.blogspot.com.

Wendy Thornton has published in The Literary Review, Riverteeth, Confluence and other literary magazines.  She has a new story coming out Summer ‘08 in the MacGuffin Magazine.  She is a regular invited reader for the Let’s Go Downtown Series, The Word is Spoken, Third Eye Spoken and at the Gainesville Civic Media Center in Gainesville , FL.  

Jan Petersen spent 16 years in North America and writes with one foot still in that continent.  Earlier this year a selection of her prose poetry was published in West Coast, North Hill (Flax Books).  Her other foot is in Lancaster. 

Cinnamon Press (UK) published Iain Britton’s first collection of poems in February 2008 – Hauled Head First into a Leviathan, which was a Forward Poetry Prize nomination this year. Interactive Press (Australia) will be publishing his second collection in 2009. Poetry is published or forthcoming in such magazines as Ambit, Agenda, Stand, The Reader, Staple, Orbis, Magma, The Stride Magazine, The Warwick Review, Mimesis (UK), Harvard Review, Drunken Boat, Bateau Press, Slope, Nimrod International, Tinfish, Rattapallax, Fulcrum (US), Poetry Saltzburg Review, Poetry NZ and Vallum (Canada). Jacket, Cordite, Heat, Southerly, Meanjin, Island and Harvest Magazine (Aust).

Colin Harris is a 29-year-old Wirral based writer and has had work published in various magazines, including Neon Highway, The People's Poet and Peggy's Blue Skylight.

Giles Goodland’s last book was Capital from Salt (2006) and he expects to have a book from Shearsman next year. He is represented in many anthologies and magazines, including The Reality Book of Sonnets, 2008, reviewed in this edition of Shadowtrain.