Stephen Willey lives in Whitechapel, London. His poetry has been anthologized in Dear World and Everyone In It (Bloodaxe, 2013) and Better Than Language (Ganzfeld Press, 2011). His long-form poem Elegy was published by Veer Books in late 2013.
Stephen enjoys working collaboratively, and has worked with numerous composers including Edward Nesbit and Richard Bullen, as well as with the post-rock band Rumour Cubes on pieces that have been performed at the Wigmore Hall, Dartington International Summer School, and at Glastonbury Music Festival, respectively.
In August 2013, Stephen traveled to Palestine on a grant from the International Artists Award (funded by British Council and Arts Council England) to develop his long-form poem Living In. In collaboration with the Palestine Writing Centre and the Lajee Centre, a community-based grass roots creative cultural center with NGO status, he also ran a series of poetry workshops with residents from Aida and Jalazone Refugee Camps.
Stephen has taught in the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London and the English and Drama department at Queen Mary, University of London, where in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive, and with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council Beyond Text project, he undertook doctoral research on the relationship between 20th-century poetry and performance with specific focus on the work of British poet Bob Cobbing.
During this time he was also the co-director of the Archive of the Now, an online audio archive of poetry, and ran www.openned.com, a poetry website with an associated London-based reading series. With Tom Bamford he now runs the Benefits event series in London.
Since January 2014, Stephen has been working at the Commonwealth Foundation as part of the Commonwealth Writers team supporting the implementation and development of a range of Commonwealth Writers’ initiatives including the announcement of the winner of the Short Story Prize, 2014 and Commonwealth Shorts. Stephen is very grateful to both the Commonwealth Foundation and to Commonwealth Writers for allowing him to take up the Summer Residency at the Arizona Poetry Center.