About

JOHN LINDLEY

‘Cheshire Poet Laureate 2004’

 ‘Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year 2010′

Born in Stockport and now living in Congleton, Cheshire, John Lindley’s poetry has appeared widely in magazines as well as being broadcast on radio.

He has run creative and critical workshops on poetry for all ages and abilities, including writers’ groups, Travellers, U3A groups, at writing festivals and in universities, schools, prisons, youth clubs and day care centres. He also runs workshops for those with learning difficulties and in the mental health sector.

An experienced performer, John has read at pubs, clubs, theatres, at Ledbury Poetry Festival and at the Buxton and Edinburgh fringe festivals. In 2007/8 he toured with four other poets in the hugely successful Bunch of Fives show. The follow-up show, Fourpenny Circus, toured in May 2009.

His self-written show, Screen Fever, which married poems written on the theme of cinema to film music and dialogue, has been performed for arts groups across the country, at the Jon Silkin Memorial Festival in Camelford, Cornwall and at Ledbury Poetry Festival. Grown from that, Reel to Real,  involved live performance and film footage. It made its sell-out debut in 2013 and began touring in 2014. 

John has won the Words of Silk Open Poetry Competition, been a runner up in the Jackson’s Arm Poetry Pamphlet Competition, a three times prize-winner in the Lancaster Literature Festival and a prize-winner in the Manchester Open Poetry, the Blythe Spirit Open Poetry, Provocations, Sentinel, and Wirral Festival of Firsts competitions. In 2010 he won 1^st prize in the International Religious Poetry Competition and was named Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year. His entry for the international Sentinel Poetry Book Competition, Love & Crossbones, won 3rd prize.

Two early booklets of his poems were followed by his first full-length collection, Stills from November Campaigns, which was published by Tarantula in 1998. This was followed by Scarecrow Crimes (New Hope International, 2002), Cheshire Rising (Cheshire County Council, 2005), House of Wonders (Riverdane, 2008), The Casting Boat (Headland, 2009), Screen Fever (Pinewood Press, 2012) and Dylan Thomas: Embers & Sparks (Riverdane, 2014). His prizewinning collection, Love & Crossbones (SPM Publications), was published in September 2018. His latest collection, Dead Men Tell Tales, was published in October 2021.

A charity CD of his songs, Wasteland, was released in March 2018. A second charity CD, Trickery, Thieves & Luck was released in October 2020.

He also performs his own songs in the band John Lindley & The Poachers for the benefit of various charities.

John was appointed as the literary ‘Arts Form Specialist’ by Congleton Borough Council to work on their 18 month Imprints Community Arts Project. Further commissions have included workshops for Radio Stoke, for Flintshire County Council’s Heritage Alive project on myths and legends, for Ellesmere Port’s Fusion project, Cheshire County Council’s Carry on Listening project for people with learning difficulties and for Age Concern for both the WearPurple arts project and the BBC’s People’s War project. He also provided distance learning workshops for writers in Africa as part of the British Council’s Crossing Borders project and travelled to Kenya to run workshops and give a reading. He has written a series of poems in a collaborative project with the American artist, Daniel Bonnell and staged performances of the poems to the projected backdrop of those poems.

He is a former Cheshire Poet Laureate and Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year.

John Lindley can be contacted for readings and workshops at:

Tel: 01260 273219 (home) e-mail: j.lindley1@sky.com

07816 766611 (mobile)  johnflindley.wordpress.com/