New Writer 2026: EmmaClaire Brightlyn

EmmaClaire Brightlyn (she/her) is an award-winning Spoken Word artist. In 2024, she was both the Loud Poets Grand Slam Champion and was shortlisted for a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for Spoken Word.

EmmaClaire has performed at events with Loud Poets and Seahorse, and at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Belladrum Festival. She is a member of City of Poets and has had work included in their 2025 Annual Review. Her work often focuses on her matrescence, and voices the joy and terror of living with a small girl-shaped dragon.

Writing Sample

Bisous

You’d been here for two days.

Two collections of hours.

Where there had been some sleeping,

Some waking,

Some feeding,

Some getting to know each other in this world.

Two days when I learned,

I realised,

I found, what I already knew.

That I could kiss you as much as I wanted.

Absolutely as much as I wanted.

It was acceptable. Encouraged, in fact. Societally, emotionally, even medically

as my kisses allowed me to absorb the microbes on your face to turn into

the magic in my body to become

the milk in my breasts that you were happily gobbling up.

Oh, I could gobble you up.

Inhale all of your perfect sweetness.

All of your infinite possibility.

All of your seemingly endless need for me and

just me and just us and just love and

I could kiss you as much as I wanted.

Not too much. Not too close. Not beyond appropriate levels as with someone else’s baby.

Not overly annoyingly like that first high school date.

Not more often than required like the discarded relationships,

failed lovers who made me feel like

I kissed them too much.

I could kiss you as much as I wanted.

And I did. And I have. And I do.

And only now are you starting to scramble or scrunch or occasionally scratch yourself out of it.

Something to do.

Somewhere to go.

Something to show me.

The gift is that now you can kiss me too…

And Daddy and Poppy and Boyley Bear and your fish book

and the red boots and those rocks you found

pleasedon’tputtheminyourmouth

With your gorgeous face you tilt upward,

lean in and present your lips, still learning how to pucker.

My girl, you can kiss me as much as you want.

EmmaClaire says:

'I am thrilled to receive a New Writers Award for Spoken Word. The baby box included a poem by Jackie Kay which now hangs above my child’s bed, and we have been delighted to receive book bundles over these past years. To have the opportunity to work with Scottish Book Trust, who champion writers and writing, is a real honour.'