John McCullough: Crowd Voltage

The Shoreham Centre

Join us for a special event with John McCullough as he performs from his exciting new poetry collection Crowd Voltage . These vivid, moving and often humorous poems explore a yearning for community. Engaging with working-class and queer experiences, the poems move between solitude and togetherness, haunted by ghosts from history while reaching towards joy, connection, and unity in unexpected places. John has run many much-appreciated poetry writing workshops for Shoreham Wordfest and on this occasion will share insights into the creative process behind the book, followed by an audience Q&A and book signing. This will be a wonderful opportunity to hear an acclaimed poet live and be part of an inspiring evening. “The collection swings delightfully from the surreal – the voice of Brighton’s iconic and collapsing West Pier features heavily – to the more straightforward albeit beautiful lyric poems and then back again.” – Mícheál McCann, The Irish Times John lives in Hove. His collection of poems, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins) won the 2020 Hawthornden Prize for Literature as well as being shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. John’s collections have been Books of the Year for publications including The Guardian , The Times , The Independent and The Telegraph and he also won the Polari First Book Prize. He teaches creative writing at the University of Brighton.