Our judges for 2026
Jon Bickley
Poet, musician and broadcaster Jon Bickley is the co-founder of the Chesham Literary Festival. He has lived in Chesham for over ten years and has been reading, writing and studying poetry for much longer.
Jon co-hosts regular podcasts, including those of the Chesham Literary Festival and the Invisible Folk Club. He has a passion for historical material rooted in a local context.
His books, including Solstice, The Rope and Autumn, can be found on Amazon, and his music on Spotify.
Ben Batten
Ben is a prizewinning writer, poet and playwright. He has published several poetry books, and has enjoyed a long career as an English teacher, inspiring others through literature.
He has won the Buckinghamshire Arts Open Short Story Competition, and twice won the Kewny Cup for Dialect Verse at the Gorsedh Kernow.
Ben is a co-founder of the Chesham Literary Festival and founder of the local poetry group Chess Poets. He is also a member of Metroland Poets, a Stanza of the Poetry Society.
Born in Penzance, he now lives in Chesham, and has recently written a novel.
Leeanne Parke
Leeanne is a poet who writes primarily under the pseudonym of Aiden Wylder.
Her work has been published in several poetry anthologies and spans themes from gothic poetry, to nature and mental health. Her writing is observational in style and often threaded with a quiet sense of otherness.
This is Leeanne's second time judging the Chesham Literary Festival Poetry competition, having won in 2024 with her poem Contradiction.
You can see more of her work on Instagram: @aidenwylder
Richard de Silva
Richard was a prizewinning poet of the 2025 Chesham Literary Festival. Originally from South London, he has lived in Chesham for ten years.
He has a degree in Creative Writing and, beyond poetry, writes across different genres, including literary, science fiction, crime, and humour.
Richard's work has appeared in numerous publications, including Ripple, Titanic Terastructures, To Hull and Back, and The Chalk Stream.
He is currently writing a novel that draws on his Anglo-Indian roots.