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Tom

poetry wallah

About Me


My name is Tom Chivers. Born 1983, London. I'm a poet, editor and live literature producer. My creative work has been published in Fire, Stride, The Libertine, The Wolf, Treci Trg (Serbia), X-Magazine, Isis, nthposition, Babylon Burning: 9/11 Five Years On, automatic-lighthouse, Dawntreader, Trespass, The Alchemy of the Verb, The Edgeless Shape, Charm Offensive and The London Magazine. Reviews and articles have appeared in Poetry London, Arts Professional, Cherwell, CEN, Poetry News and Culture Wars. I'm Associate Editor of Tears in the Fence , and was the first ever Poet in Residence at Bishopsgate Institute .
I run Penned in the Margins , promoting poetry through live events, projects and publications. I've promoted at The Spitz, The Luminaire, Whitechapel Gallery, Bishopsgate Institute, Everyman Cinema Club, Cargo and loads of other places. I produced the 14 date UK tour Generation Txt and used to broadcast every week on the mighty Resonance 104.4FM . The Times described me as a 'poetry wallah'. Later they changed their minds and called me 'the industrious 24 year-old'. Well, which is it, eh? Hmm..? I also co-founded London Word Festival with Marie McPartlin and Sam Hawkins.
My blog is this is yogic .
Q: Who's that stern-faced fellow you're passing off as yourself? A: It's my namesake Thomas Holley Chivers , American poet and friend, later adversary, of Edgar Allan Poe.
My diary:
DATE VENUE ARTISTS DETAILS
5 Jun Bishopsgate Institute Tim Wells, Simon Barraclough, Jay Bernard, Tom Chivers £7/5
25 Jun Not telling Tom Chivers tbc
3 Jul Bishopsgate Institute Iain Sinclair, Chris McCabe, Hannah Silva, Tom Chivers £7/5
5 Jul O2 Wireless Festival Tom Chivers tbc
16 Jul Canon Tales Tom Chivers tbc
26 Jul 14 Hour: Afternoon Mutiny Tom Chivers £3
2 Nov Battle of Ideas Tom Chivers 'Poetry and Place' tbc
HOW TO BUILD A CITY by Tom Chivers
Prose/poetry hybrid. Ambitious travelogue that never manages to leave Liverpool Street Station. Published in The Edgeless Shape as an A2 poster pull-out. Posters available on their own for £2. Click Add to Cart.

My Interests

Poetry, music, literature, cooking, walking, landscapes and cityscapes, old books, love and friends

I'd like to meet:

Writers, artists, musicians and likemindeds. Potential partners (in the strictly business sense).
Website: www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk
Blog: thisisyogic.wordpress.com

Music:

The Decembrists, Dick Gaughan, Arcade Fire, Ravi Shankar, Martin Carthy, Miles Davis, John Tavener, Regina Spektor, Robert Johnson, Rachmaninov, The Doors, 17 Hippies, Pete Seeger, Palestrina, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Conor Oberst, A Silver Mt Zion, The Lost Revue, The Young Knives, Jimi Hendrix, The Pixies, Seth Lakeman, Patrick Wolf, Mogwai, Willy Mason, Lotti, Monteverdi, Thomas Tallis, Rancid, Allegri, Jeremy Warmsley, Radiohead, Handel, Larrikin Love, Los Campeninos, Messaien, Neil Young

Movies:

28 Days Later, Indiana Jones, Annie Hall, Hotel Rwanda, A Clockwork Orange, A Bout de Souffle, Withnail & I, Zatoichi, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Disco Pigs, The Battle of Algiers, Io Non Ho Paura, My Beautiful Laundrette, Ran, Meantime, Schindler's List, Sideways, 13 Conversations About One Thing, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Life is Beautiful

Television:

University Challenge, The Bill, Bruce Parry's Tribe, Spooks

Books:

Beowulf, Piers Plowman, The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, The Book of Demons (Barry MacSweeney), Lights Out for the Territory, Passage to India, Bleak House, The Buddha of Suburbia, On The Road, Howl, Ranter, The Four Quartets, Briggflats, The Willy Poems, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, Ulysses, Autumn Journal, Selected Poems of Frank O'Hara, Pearl in the Silver Morning, North, Crossing the Water, GM Hopkins, Kamau Braithwaite, The African Origins of UFOs, The Underground Rivers of London, Our Mutual Scarlet Boulevard, Bleak House, Bhavagad Gita, Barlaam & Iosaphat

My Blog

London Word Festival 2008

London Word Festival is almost upon us! From 20 February to 14 March 2008, East London will be crawling with some of the top literary talent, as well as a host of musicians, comics and spoken wor...
Posted by Tom on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:40:00 PST

Bah Humbug! raised £202.06 for charity

Our last gig of 2007 saw Farringdon's Betsey Trotwood pub overrun by poets, writers, spoken word artists, musicians and - of course - fans of all that. My co-organiser Ventriloquist and I raised £202....
Posted by Tom on Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:37:00 PST

Wordpress blog - this is yogic

Hey hey I have a new Blog over at http://thisisyogic.wordpress.com Do go and have a look, leave comments, bookmark it etc. Cheers! Tom x...
Posted by Tom on Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:54:00 PST

Various Poems, Various Places

I've got two poems in the lavishly-produced new literary tome Trespass which comes from the makers of the London Magazine. And one poem forthcoming in Dreams That Money Can Buy. I'm very excited ...
Posted by Tom on Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:00:00 PST

Poem: Travel Update

Commissioned but never broadcast by LBC Radio, a fun one to perform!   Travel Update I'm in a queue of four in the stationery shop and the bloke at the front's been there almost five minutes wait...
Posted by Tom on Tue, 14 Aug 2007 10:12:00 PST

Generation Txt is coming to London (and on UK tour)

OK kids, it's finally arrived... after months of preparation, GENERATION TXT is hitting the road. That's right - Joe Dunthorne, Inua Ellams, Laura Forman, Abigail Oborne, Emma McGordon and James Wilke...
Posted by Tom on Fri, 11 May 2007 06:47:00 PST

Late nights, early mornings

Not sure if I can share this yet, but what the hey, my good news is that my debut collection is gonna be published this year by the uberbrilliant Flipped Eye. Yay! On the flip side, it means here I am...
Posted by Tom on Fri, 12 Jan 2007 07:51:00 PST

Season's Greetings and review of 2006

penned in the margins e-bulletin Well, it's been an exciting first year for the fully-fledged penned in the margins... Sometimes I can hardly believe that what was a mere seedling of an idea this tim...
Posted by Tom on Wed, 20 Dec 2006 11:54:00 PST

"poetry wallah"

The Times have described me as a 'poetry wallah' in their online music blog. http://timesonline.typepad.com/music/2006/10/phrased_confuse .html That's kinda cool, I think......
Posted by Tom on Thu, 12 Oct 2006 09:53:00 PST

Poem: Willy of Whitechapel

Why won't anyone publish my Willy? It's getting old now, so here it is for free...     WILLY OF WHITECHAPEL   Willy Weekes on the ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-micros...
Posted by Tom on Wed, 11 Oct 2006 05:30:00 PST