Shopping bag.

Let’s be honest, the car park of a derelict looking warehouse in the depths of Bermondsey, South London is the last place you’d expect to meet a poet. This is Britain after all. Our rich history of poets is lined with sprawling back gardens or country walks so green and lush they induce a rush of words to the head for the famous scribes in question. This is 2024 though, and thanks to 33-year-old Greta Bellamacina, poetry is taking on a new form.

You could say it’s never felt more radical. Especially as Greta, who looks like the lead singer of a band or like she could be in a Gucci ad, makes her way across the dampened car park to greet Semaine. Appearances aside, poetry is a river that runs deep for Bellamacina. She’s no overnight sensation writing poems for the sake of it. The Camden born creative has been writing since she was a teenager with success coming her way throughout her twenties.

In 2013, she was shortlisted as The Young Poet Laureate of London. Just last year she edited British Contemporary Love, a collection of romantic poems published by powerhouse Faber & Faber. Oh, and she’s also had two other collections of poetry published, Kaleidoscope and Nature’s Jewels.

She’s also known for breathing new life into poetry readings across London. This isn’t hard to imagine as she whisks us from the car park up into the warehouse in all of her it-girl glory. Seconds later and we are stood in the heart of her work and all that fashionable girl nonsense falls out of the window. We are in the studio she shares with long-term partner Robert Montgomery. There are various quotes and excerpts from their poems all over the walls and a bookshelf stacked with the work of influencers. There is depth here. Poets sharing a studio space? Like we said, this is 2016.

Bellamacina and Montgomery, who have recently had a son (their first child), are in the midst of launching New River Press, a publishing company dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what poetry means today particularly for a younger audience and as Bellamacina puts it herself: “We want to launch a place for poetry that doesn’t exist yet”.

A few more moments later, on the cosy sofa in the centre of their studio and Bellamacina is in full swing. “We were always really annoyed poets never get paid,” Bellamacina says bluntly with a coffee now firmly in her hand. “Out of every single art form, it just seems that there is a weird stigma between poetry and money. Even if you are with one of the best poetry publishers ,you still don’t always get a reward.”

Then there’s both Bellamacina’s and Montgomery’s need to go against the tradition of poetry by selecting individuals who aren’t afraid to bleed their minds on to the page. “We were looking for a certain amount of frankness,” she says of her portfolio of poets. “We have Zimon Drake. His poetry is a collection that he has written over 30 years. He’s the type of person that doesn’t do social media, doesn’t do all that stuff. He’s too much of a punk to self-promote himself. His stuff has obviously changed throughout the years but what he is saying is still similar. Overall, we want that authenticity.”