Shannon Smith Meekings is an East London born, Jamaican and English poet, who graduated from Goldsmiths University in 2022. With her first publication of five poems appearing in the 2023 Spring edition of The Poetry Review, the first edition to be curated by editor Wayne Holloway-Smith, Shannon’s work centres around heritage, queerness and explorations of self, in reflections of social class and race. With seven published poems in The Poetry Review to date, Shannon continues to develop her writing style through form, tone and point of view, in order to create engaging narratives, whereby readers can engage through a multitude of entry points. Shannon’s commentary on the subcultures of which she has been familiar throughout her life, as presented in the poems ‘Gyalist’ and ‘My mum tells me this in passing’, serve as a self imposed catalyst in the reawakening of connection to the Caribbean culture which has influenced her experience, seemingly stunted by the passing of her maternal grandmother. Untangling and reimagining these associations to ancestry, culture, tradition and race, intertwined with the narratives of her queerness and working-class English background has shaped her approach to poetry.