Readings, Festivals and Performance

Reciting poetry to a public audience is integral to my work as a poet. I am interested in the common ground shared by poetry and theatre, both in composition and performance.

For details of readings, public lectures, and other events in which I am participating, see the News and Diary page.

Over the last few years, I’ve read my work at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival, Wenlock Poetry Festival, the Poetry Book Fair (London), Shrewsbury Festival of Literature, the Troubadour (Earls Court), Foyles Gallery (London), the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh), Strokestown Poetry Festival (Ireland), the Herbert Art Gallery (Coventry), Goldsmiths, Warwick Words Festival, the Midlands Arts Centre, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Polesworth Abbey Church, the International Coleridge Conference, the Wordsworth Summer Conference, Poetry Alight (Lichfield), Leicester Shindig, Poetry Bites at the Kitchen Garden Café, the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Birmingham School of Art, and the University of Malta, Valletta.

I give readings and run poetry workshops in schools, for example at Headington School, Sevenoaks School and Radley College (where I was Poet in Residence). I also run creative writing workshops for community groups in the English Midlands and beyond.

I’ve conducted many ‘in conversation’ and panel sessions with other writers for the excellent Birmingham Literature Festival – including Will Self, Tom McCarthy, Sunjeev Sahota, Jenn Ashworth, Anjali Joseph, Priya Basil, Jane Borodale, Kerry Hudson, Sathnam Sanghera, Nikesh Shukla and Lottie Moggach.

I am also an (amateur) actor. Most of my performances been with the Crescent Theatre, which has been putting on plays in the city of Birmingham for over 80 years. Here is a list of the roles I have played – all at the Crescent, except where specified:

Cornwall - King Lear (November 2014)

Brutus – Julius Caesar (March 2011)

Horatio – Hamlet (March 2010)

Charles Ryder – Brideshead Revisited (March 2006)

Dracula – Dracula (Liz Lochhead version) (Oldbury Rep, Langley Green, July 2005)

Gregory Black – The Late Edwina Black (Oldbury Rep, Langley Green, March 2005)

Orsino – Twelfth Night (Summer Tour 2003)

Eilert Loevborg – Hedda Gabler (January 2003)

Benvolio – Romeo and Juliet (April 2002)

Hugh Ardale – The Second Mrs Tanqueray (March 2001)

Careless – The School for Scandal (October 1999)

I have performed in or voiced a number of audio broadcasts. Most recently, I voiced the part of Professor Henry Bedson in The Lonely Death of Janet Parker (a BirminghamLive production, by Lucy Ryan).