Chris beckett

Autumn Reading Dates 2025

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A little flock of reading dates – replacing the swifts that have left our skies recently – have gathered themselves into something that almost resembles a brief Autumn Reading Tour. Admittedly, not going too far beyond the Greater London area – but to Maidstone and (briefly) Winchester – but of course I’m very happy to be granted these opportunities to read my work. Live links to these events are provided in the details below. And, as you’ll see from the details below, the chance to read with some really talented, inventive and entertaining poets along the way. In particular, I’ll be launching my new chapbook of poems – Walking Away – published by Paul O’Prey’s excellent Dare-Gale Press. If you are in any of the vicinities mentioned – I’d be delighted to see you there – Martyn

Wednesday 10th September – 8pm @ Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution, 11 South Grove, London N6 6BS – reading w/ Tim Ades and Maggie Brookes-Butt. HLSI Fundraising Event: Tickets £10 https://hlsi.org.uk/whats-on/poetry-please/

Sunday 28th September – 7.30pm @ Torriano Poetry, 99 Torriano Avenue, Kentish Town, London NW5 2RX w/ poet/translators Will Stone & Stephen Watts. Floor Readers welcome: £6 + concs https://torriano.org/whats-on/poetry/torriano-poetry-28-09-2025

Tuesday 7th October – 6.30pm @ Maidstone Literary Festival, Maidstone Museum, Saint Faith’s Street, Maidstone w/ Maggie Brookes-Butt & Nancy Charley. Open mic readers welcome: £8 https://www.maidstonelitfest.org/what-s-on-2025/poetry-open-mic-evening-hosted-by-maggie-brookes%2C-nancy-charley-%26-martyn-crucefix

Sunday 12th October – 2pm @ Winchester Poetry Festival, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester SO23 8SB – poetry prize anthology ceremony where I’ll be reading my long-listed poem – the prize winners to be announced on the day! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/winchester-poetry-prize-ceremony-2025-tickets-1431638672809

Saturday 25th October – 1pm @ The Small Publishers Fair, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion St, London WC1R 4RL reading w/ David Harsent. Free Event. This is a Dare-Gale Press reading, launching my chapbook which they are publishing: Walking Away. Free Event: https://smallpublishersfair.co.uk/

And on the SAME DAY I’ll be second launching the chapbook Walking Away…

Saturday 25th October – 7pm @ The Ship Poetry Reading Series, organised by Chris Beckett, 134 New Cavendish St. London W1W 6YB – reading w/ Barbara Cumbers, Jack Cooper, Anthony Joseph, + Fawzia Muradali Kane: £5 https://www.chrisbeckettpoems.com/news.html

Thursday 6th November – 7.30pm ON-LINE ONLY @ Fire River Poets, Taunton, Somerset. Open mic slots are available. Register for this event at: https://fireriverpoets.org.uk/2024/12/november-6th-2025-martyn-crucefix/

Interviewed on ‘Poetry Worth Hearing’

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Just before the Christmas break, I was pleased to be asked by Kathleen McPhilemy to contribute to the January 2023 edition of her on-going series of podcasts, Poetry Worth Hearing.

Kathleen’s own introductory remarks about what the podcast includes are as follows:

Jessica Mookherjee reading from two recent collections, Tigress and Notes from a Shipwreck (both published by Nine Arches Press), and Martyn Crucefix talking about the poetry he thinks worth reading. We also have new poems from Beth Davyson, Stephen Paul Wren, Pat Winslow, Suzannah Houston and Chris Beckett. To learn more about the poets and the publications mentioned as well as to see the texts of new poems, go to https://www.poetryworthhearing.biz.

You can find the podcast here. Scroll down a little to Episode 11. My discussion starts at around 28 mins in – but do listen to all the contributors.

Helen Kidd

I was especially pleased to hear Pat Winslow’s poem ‘As for the owl’ which carries a dedication to the late, much-missed Helen Kidd. By a strange coincidence, Helen was one of the members of the Old Fire Station Poetry Workshop (led by Tom Rawling by in the 1980s) ) about which I talk in my piece.

I also talk about growing up in rural Wiltshire in a house with few books. My years spent pursuing science – beginning to study medicine at Guys Hospital in London – then my drastic shift to studying Philosophy and English at Lancaster University, where I worked with the Scottish poet, David Craig, on one of the first Creative Writing courses in the UK. At Worcester College, Oxford, in the 1980s I was writing a DPhil thesis on the poet Shelley while also attending poetry workshops with WN Herbert, Peter Forbes, Pauline Stainer, Keith Jebb, Anne Born (and Tom and Helen).

Kathleen also asked me to say something about the poets I go back to and I talk a little (and read from) Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and WS Merwin. Trying to pick contemporary poets to highlight is an impossible task but, on this occasion at least, I speak about Marvin Thompson, Nancy Campbell and John McCullough.

Tom Rawling