Matryoshka Poetry
About
This site came into being in October 2015 and is the culmination of long-term literary plans by Bart and a number of fellow writers. The aim is to offer an online poetry magazine of quality to new and emerging writers, particularly those who study creative writing or are actively engaged with crafting their creativity.
The Masthead:
Yolanda Barton is a poet, aspiring novelist and habitual drinker of lethal coffee who lives and studies at Oxford University. Dividing her life between the Midlands, the West Country, and East Asia, she has worked in a number of different careers, including as an English teacher in South Korea and Taiwan. In South Korea, as a sideline, she helped a city council to create recipe books for the migrant brides of rural Korean men, and helped out in an orphanage. Along the way, she began researching her first novel, Under Jinju’s Cliffs, a war story inspired by the stories she heard of the Japanese colonial period in Korea. Exploring the story’s background took her to Japan itself on a fact-finding mission. The first draft was finished in southern Taiwan, where the colonial-era buildings remain undemolished and many of the elderly still speak Japanese. She plans to follow Under Jinju’s Cliffs with a story set on Taiwan’s north coast, which will feature a series of important social events that she saw take place there during her stay.
As a child, Yolanda was published in multiple poetry anthologies, winning a competition with WH Smiths several years running. A fan of James Fenton and Jo Shapcott, she is keen to share her passion for verse with others.
Stephanie Farnsworth is a dedicated poet and freelance writer. She has been published on the Huffington Post, Everyday Feminism, as well as an assortment of poetry websites and is also a curator for The Queerness, a website dedicated to equality issues.
Stephanie has a particular focus upon writings which dissect identity issues, and has been shaped by her experiences growing up in the North East of England as a bisexual woman. Her passion for using fiction, nonfiction and poetry to bring attention to important causes and silenced stories has driven much of her work. Her commitment lies in challenging audiences and the pursuit of telling stories which have historically been ignored.
Karen (Downs-)Barton is currently studying a BA in the history of art with creative writing with the Open University. In her previous working roles, she has been a dancer, a magician's assistant, an arts contributor for local radio, and taught both art and dance. When not studying, updating her blog and creating poetry she can be found wandering through junk shops looking for interesting items to incorporate into her visual poetry creations. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Curly Mind, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Quatrain Fish, Salsa World Magazine, Wiltshire Young Artists and others. She can be found at: http://thepapercutpoet.blogspot.co.uk
