Nkechi Aduba

Nkechi Aduba was born in Ipswich in 1994 and spent long stretches of her childhood in Enugu, where her mother's family lives. She studied music before she studied anything else, and the training shows: her poems are built on repetition with a single element altered, which is what change ringing is and what grief is too.

She was a Faber New Poet in 2021 and won the Blythe Award for a single poem in 2023 for 'Standing', which appears here as the hinge of the sequence 'Ropes'. Her work has been set for voice and handbells by the composer Elin Marsh.

Bellringer is her first full collection. She teaches part-time, rings at two towers, and is unnervingly good at explaining method ringing to people who did not ask.

'A peal is three hours of people not making a mistake,' she says. 'That's not a metaphor I invented. It was just sitting there.'