Polly Stretton

Polly's first poetry collection 'Girl's Got Rhythm' was followed by a series of poems about the tragic young poet Thomas Chatterton, 'Chatterton', and a pamphlet of children's poetry, 'Six Small Beasties and a Lullaby'. Her poetry has been translated by Mariana Zavati Gardner for the Romanian literary journals, 'Banchetful ' and 'Pro Saeculum'. As a poet in residence at Croome Court, two of her poems were displayed in the basement there for the Sole to Soul project. With thanks to many editors, she is widely published in poetry anthologies.

For the commemoration of WWI, Polly was involved with various projects and she was pleased to curate four pamphlets that included poems by many different poets: 'Remembering the Somme', 'The Unremembered', 'The Unremembered—World War One's Army of Workers—The British Story', and 'Motherhood, Loss and the First World War'. In 2019, Polly collaborated with Charley Barnes on the 'Pressed Flowers' project, which led to a floriferous anthology of poems, and in 2020 she was instrumental in the publication ‘Call and Response’ collated by Amanda Bonnick. 2022 saw a collaboration with Nina Lewis for 'A Tale of Two Cities II' in which poets from Worcester UK and Worcester USA celebrated their poetry. All available on Amazon.

Polly has coordinated and judged writing competitions for various organisations. A Director with Worcestershire indie publisher Black Pear Press, she is a member of OU Poets and the Society of Authors. She published 'The Alchemy of 42' in 2020: 42 poems to prompts from the alternative genre spoken word event 42Worcester which she ran for several years, and published her collection 'Growing Places' in 2021.