Janette Ayachi is a London-born, Edinburgh-based Scottish-Algerian poet who has been published in over eighty literary journals and anthologies from presses such as Polygon, Seren, and Salt’s The Best British Poetry of 2015. She graduated from Stirling University with a BA combined honours degree in English Literature and Film & Media Studies, and from Edinburgh University with an MSc in Creative Writing.
She collaborates with artists and engages in numerous projects, performances, exhibitions, and events. In 2016, after performing her poetry live on BBC Radio Scotland, she was invited to return as an arts and culture critic for The Afternoon Show. The following year, she was commissioned to write a poem for a documentary Conversations on a Bench for BBC Radio 4, and in 2019 she appeared on the BBC television art series Loop. Her essays and poetry have been published internationally, and some translated into Marathi, Greek, French, and soon Spanish. She is also the author of the poetry pamphlets Pauses at Zebra Crossings and A Choir of Ghosts, the children’s chapter book The Mermaid, The Girl and The Gondola, illustrated by Fabio Perla in Italy, and her first full poetry collection, Hand Over Mouth Music, which won the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year Literary Award in 2019. She is currently working on Lonerlust: A Poet’s Memoir, a nonfiction narrative about desire and traveling alone, searching for connections with landscapes, culture, and human experience.