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Near the sea’s horizon, rose-gold pools oscillate below stanchions of revelatory light. Last sunset, the horizon was a line of poker red beneath asphalt dusk. (From Doom Loop)

Commissions

  • Poems engraved into the windows of the new £6m Deakin Learning Centre on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus for Addenbrooke’s Arts
  • Stardust – a poem specially written for Campo del Cielo
  • A Doddle commissioned by The Guardian
  • Our Storeys project with artist Sue Ridge for First Aid Art at North Middlesex University Hospital
  • The Forest Ridge poem commissioned by High Weald AONB
  • Ghost School video & poetry project with artist Sue Ridge for Creative Partnerships in Hackney
  • Outside In project with artist Sue Ridge for Arts & Healthcare at Eastbourne & Hastings hospitals
  • Fugue - a poem about Eadweard Muybridge and Kingston, Surrey, commissioned by THE SOUTH as part of Project poetry! on the theme place of birth
  • Two in One private commission

Workshops
John has run creative writing workshops in shops, schools, galleries, museums, churches, libraries, hospitals, youth centres and prisons. John has also developed highly successful issue-based workshops combining creative writing with video and other media. For ASAP/Pevensey Community Festival, Bognor Regis he developed Spy Game – a series of creative missions for young people based around spy fiction and ran the World’s Shortest Spy Story text messaging competition. John set up Arundel Writers Group and ran very successful creative writing workshops for older people resulting in the publication of an anthology. He has run workshops for young people and over 60s as part of Runnymede International Literary Festival. With Footwork, the collective of Sussex poets, at events such as The Coast Line in Hastings and Pavement Poems in Horsham, John has been one of the activist poets encouraging passers-by to create and display their own creative writing. John is also a qualified teacher of English as a second language.

  • Creative writing and poetry workshops for teenagers supported by Poetry Ireland, Cuisle Limerick City International Poetry Festival
  • Best Mates drop-in creative writing workshops for Father’s Day at Brighton Jubilee Library
  • Crew Club Scary Stories workshops with 12-16 year olds at Whitehawk in Brighton as part of Brighton Children’s Book Festival resulting in a DVD
  • Member of Publishing Panel for University of Chichester
  • Creative writing for mixed groups and older people at Runnymede International Literary Festival in association with Royal Holloway, University of London
  • Creative workshops at Addlestone Youth Centre as part of Runnymede International Literary Festival including creative writing, dance, drumming, hip-hop, photography, street arts, and video resulting in an exhibition and DVD
  • Arundel Writers’ Group for older people resulting in publication
  • For ASAP/Pevensey Community Festival, Bognor Regis John developed Spy Game – a series of creative missions for young people based around spy fiction - and ran the World’s Shortest Spy Story text messaging competition.