Rachel Long (born in 1988, London) is the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Womxn of Colour, based at the Southbank Centre. She began writing poetry after attending a workshop with Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, a transformative experience she describes as “radically intimate, and yet simultaneously expansive. I’ve been writing poems since I left that room.”

“In My Darling” from the Lions Long writes on love, the family, sexual politics – broad subjects, treated with a pin-sharp attention to the local and specific (an estate ‘built like Tetris’, the ‘lit throat of a candle’). Her advice for poets starting out is to “listen to the poems more than the noise around you; find good teachers, honour them, make good friends, create a space for yourself and for them.”