Biography

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.

An experienced performer, John has read at pubs, clubs, theatres and at the Buxton and Edinburgh fringe festivals. He staged a self-written show, Screen Fever: Movie Poems, at Congleton Library in September 1999, which married poems written on the theme of cinema to film music and dialogue. The show has since been performed for arts groups and at the Jon Silkin Memorial Festival in Camelford, Cornwall and at Ledbury Poetry Festival. In 2007/8 he toured with four other former Cheshire Poet Laureates in the hugely successful Bunch of Fives show. The follow-up show, Fourpenny Circus, began touring in May 2009.

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 and the Blythe Spirit Open Poetry competitions.

Two booklets of his poems appeared in 1976 and 1982 and 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) and House of Wonders (Riverdane, 2008). A new collection, The Casting Boat, was published by Headland in July 2009.

John was appointed as the literary ‘Arts Form Specialist’ by Congleton Borough Council to work on their 18 month Imprints Community Arts Project. Recent commissions include running 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 is currently writing poems in a collaboration with the American artist, Daniel Bonnell. The results will be published in 2010.

He was appointed Cheshire Poet Laureate for 2004.