Andy Willoughby

Andy Willoughby is a former poet laureate of Middlesbrough in the North East of England and has published several books that draw on history, travel and mythologies both modern and ancient including Sampo: Heading Further North, Tough and The Wrong California. His work has been translated into Finnish, Estonian, Swedish, and several other languages. He runs Ek Zuban Press and Literature Development with fellow poet Bob Beagrie. He performs his work nationally and internationally, has been a senior lecturer in Creative Writing and a UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence in Tartu, Estonia.. He is a poetry activist and organiser and has been instrumental in developing longstanding connections and exchanges between poets from the North East of England and the Baltic Countries.He is also a playwright and theatre director.
Andy’s last project “Between Stations Live” used multimedia, live and recorded music, spoken word, stand-up travelogue and documentary footage. Developed with Finnish and English musicians Anton Flint and Masi Hukari and film director Dan Perry based on Andy’s Between Stations – a critically acclaimed long poem (Smokestack Books 2016), the show examines memories of a trip to Siberia with Finnish beat poets whilst travelling through the remnants of the last steelworks of Teesside whilst recovering from surgery for Thyroid cancer.