Faber new poets 2016

Funded by Arts Council England, Faber New Poets aims to identify and support emerging talents at an early stage in their careers.

Through a programme of mentorship, bursary and pamphlet publication, the scheme offers four poets a year the time, guidance and encouragement they require to help in the development of their work in the longer term. Elaine Beckett grew up in Kent and studied music, film and architecture in London.

She has mainly worked as a university lecturer. In 2008 she moved to Dorset where she joined a poetry group led by Annie Freud.

In 2012 she won the Bridport's Dorset Award. Her poems have been published in Templar's Skein anthology, South Bank Poetry and the Bloodaxe Raving Beauties anthology, Hallelujah for 50ft Women. Crispin Best lives in London and at www.crispinbest.com.

He edits For Every Year, an online project aiming to collect a piece of art or writing in honour of every year since 1400.

His writing has appeared in The Best British Poetry 2015 (Salt), the Quietus, Dazed & Confused, Poems in Which and clinic, among others.

He has performed his poetry to audiences in New York, Chicago, Berlin, Melbourne, Edinburgh and at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Sam Buchan-Watts was born in London in 1989. He studied English Literature at Goldsmiths and Creative Writing at UEA.

He is a co-editor of the poetry anthology series clinic.

His poems have appeared in Poetry London and Salt's The Best British Poetry series, and his articles in PN Review, i-D and elsewhere. Rachel Curzon was born in Leeds in 1978. She studied English at Oxford, trained to be a teacher in London, and now teaches in a boys' school in Hampshire.

She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and was a runner-up in the Bridport Prize in the same year.

Her poems have appeared in the Rialto, Poetry London and Magma.

She lives in Andover.