POEMDEMONIUM

The Organisers

Samantha was born in East Belfast in 1989 but was a consumate jet-setter from an early age. She traces her artistic roots back to a year she spent in Los Angeles when young, and has since developed a taste for American spoken word and slam poetry. She completed her BA (Hons) in English at the University of Ulster in 2011 and her subsequent career developments in retail have done nothing to dampen her creative flair, as she has been writing and performing poetry ever since. She has a penchant for spending hours on instagram, where her favourite searches comprise of cocktails, cupcakes and kittens – but not necessarily in that order.

Nathan was born in Blackpool, Lancs. To a captive audience in 1989 and spent much of his early childhood in The Netherlands, where he began writing “poems” at the age of 7. He completed his MA in Modern Poetry at Queens University, Belfast in 2012 and has been writing and performing ever since for anyone who will listen. He has an ardent fondness for wit, pastry and all things Eurovision, and is secretly something of an apocoloptimist.

Nathan has also been published in fourXfour, A New Ulster and has edited the Reflexion journal for the University of Ulster, Coleraine.

Samantha and Nathan met at University and bonded promptly over a mutual love of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world instead of all the highbrow literature they ought to have been reading. A mutual passion for poetry quickly emerged, and this event is their joint public creative debut.