CATCH MY WEEKLY RADIO SHOW!!!
InTOCZEKated goes out weekly on BCB Radio
Sundays, 6pm-7pm UK time www.bcbradio.co.uk or 106.6fm in Bradford area of West Yorkshire
Guest on it or have your shit played on it: send CD, info etc. to Nick Toczek, New House, 108 Ashgrove, Greengates, Bradford, BD10 0BP or email me on [email protected].
AND CATCH/FEED INTO MY ROCK JOURNALISM!!!
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NEWS! NEWS! NEWS!
New Britanarchist album on the way with recordings being done in Summer and Autumn 2009 so watch this space...
oh, and watch this space for news (once the costly legal stuff's out the way) of what's happening about Pete Doherty and his band, Babyshambles, having used my lyrics from my song 'Stiff With A Quiff' (which you're listening to now) on their song 'Baddie's Boogie' on the albums 'Shotter's Nation' and 'Oh What A Lovely Tour'...
oh, and go to my other site, myspace.com/britanarchists to hear other Britanarchist tracks and read other stuff...
in September 2008 Caboodle Books have published three new books of my poetry: 'My & My Poems', 'Hogs'n'Dogs'n'Slugs'n'Bugs' and 'Number Number Cut A Cucumber'. All three are for kids and adults. They're only £5.99 each. Buy them ... or you'll go to hell... or Tescos or Asda or ebay or facebook or even - God forbid - myspace!...
oh, and, if you're a year seven kid in the UK, Booked Up are offering you the chance to choose one of twelve books for free... one of them being 'Read Me Out Loud!' which me and Paul Cookson edited for Macmillan... so get it for free!!!...
and my political opera, 'The Jailer's Tale', gets its London premiere at The Arts Depot in Spring 2010, with other performances at The Royal Festival Halls and at The Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey.
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*** OUT NOW!! ***
Totally InTOCZEKated
NICK'S 25-TRACK CD ALBUM OF SONGS
Nick's vocals & lyrics / various bands
(This is one of the tracks playing now. Go to myspace.com/britanarchists to hear more).
ONLY £5 (+ £1 postage, cheque/P.O. payable to Nick Toczek)
Orders to: Nick Toczek, New House, 108 Ashgrove, Greengates, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD10 0BP, England
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EIGHT IMPORTANT WORDS:
1. Anarchism. I represent myself, speak up for myself and for what matters to me. I don't need or want a politician to do that for me.
2. Pool. I'm an okay pool-player and I speed-swim a mile in my local pool three times a week.
3. Home. I travel the world as a performer, so coming home is cool. And this really is home. I was born less than two miles from where I now live.
4. Family. I became a grandfather in June 2006. Gaynor and I have been partners since we met on Xmas Day 1979. Both my parents are still alive and well (and together).
5. Justice. Prosecute George Bush and Tony Blair for their war crimes.
6. Words. I do some creative writing every single day. And talking matters. Wars, victimisation and violence begin where people cease to talk.
7. Drugs. People using drugs isn't the problem. The problem is drugs using people... nicotine kills its addicts. Choose drugs that don't use you. Mine are coffee and beer.
8. Money. Think of it as the drug that uses us all and is slowly killing the lot of us. The weird thing is that, unlike the air we breathe and the earth we walk, money's not real - it's just a stupid human invention, like borders and nationality and religion.
***LIKES: challenges, hot curries, cold beer, hot weather, driving, gigging, flying, new experiences, not being dead yet, saunas, the Yorkshire Dales, paintball...
***DISLIKES: gambling, governments, smoking, internet adverts (esp. spam), tea (it tastes like dishwater), dead flesh as food, astrology cos it's rubbish, all vanity (including inessential cosmetic surgery), smalltalk, racist crap, being made to dance, weaponry and all things military...
***HERE'S WHAT MY PUBLICITY SHEET SAYS ABOUT ME:
Best-selling author, Nick Toczek, is a full-time professional writer and performer who currently works variously as a poet, magician, storyteller, puppeteer, novelist, stand-up comic, radio DJ, political researcher, creative writing tutor, journalist, librettist, advertising copy-writer, and political speech-writer. He’s published over thirty books and has made about 40,000 public appearances. His poetry books alone have sold about three-quarters of a million copies.
As a writer in schools, he’s worked with pupils from around 5,000 schools. He also performs at festivals and family events, in libraries and prisons, on radio and TV, in colleges and residential homes, in pubs, clubs and community centres.
In recent years, he’s been a visiting writer (working in schools and in the community) in China, France, Indonesia (Borneo, Sumatra, Bali and Java), Egypt, Kuwait, Cyprus, Italy, Malaysia (Kuatalumpur and Penang) and Singapore. Later this year he'll be in Russia, Qatar and Egypt (again), and in Thailand in Spring 2010 (check him out on www.authorsabroad.com). He's had a pantomime and a musical published; presents a own weekly show on local radio; had a poem featured in an award-winning TV advert; was the featured writer in a BAFTA-nominated programme for schools; and – after a decade of writing primarily for children - has resumed writing and performing for adults. He’s been employed as a contributing consultant on the BBC’s Digital Curriculum for schools, and is one half of the multi-media performance duo, Two Shaven Heads (with singer-songwriter-musician Imani Hekima). He’s working on a bunch more books for adults and a couple more for children.
He regularly tours presenting two one-man shows. For families there’s Nick Toczek’s Million-Miles-An-Hour Show, a blend of his magic, poems, stories, puppets and comedy, with plenty of audience interaction and participation. For adults there’s An Evening With Nick Toczek in which he presents a mixture of performance poetry, true stories, satire, magic and comedy. In addition, he regularly works as a close-up magician, particularly in restaurants and bars. He’s also recently been doing puppetry for adults as well as resuming occasional stand-up comedy gigs after a break of several years.
In ’98, The Dragons Cantata, composer Malcolm Singer’s setting of some of Nick’s dragon poems, was performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall with a full symphony orchestra and an 800-strong combined schools choir. Perfect Pitch, their football cantata was premiered at The London Barbican in Jan. ’04. And, in December ’05, Golden Apple published Dragons! The Musical, a play-script by Nick set around songs from the cantata.
Nick, who’s a non-smoking vegetarian, is married with two grown-up kids, lives in Bradford and buys far too much on ebay.
***AND HERE'S WHAT THE MEDIA'S SAID ABOUT MY WORK:
On my performance poetry:
“The most exciting and visual performer we have this side of Benjamin Zephaniah†NME...
“The greatest success was without doubt ‘Mr Dynamite’, the Englishman Nick Toczek whose performance of all-round writings exploded like a firework.†Neue Presse (German newspaper)...
On my stand-up comedy:
“See him if you can. He’s brilliant.†The Stage...
On my children’s poetry books:
“A combination of straight-hitting humour and verbal dexterity. It is the well-honed work of a performance poet – crackling with rhythms, raps, rhymes and repetitions that beg to be read aloud and savoured for sound as well as amusing storylines.†The Times Educational Supplement...
On my poetry for adult readers:
“A powerful writer who spins words into images with such seeming ease… He uses language in ways others can never hope to emulate†U.S. Small Press Review...
“Toczek is bitter, disturbing and political. His language gets harder and more effective with each publication.†The Guardian...
On my 2004 novel, Group of Heroes:
“A more interesting writer than most… an anti-novel, eschewing such bourgeois expectations as plot, continuity and coherence. It does it rather well, too. The pleasures come from Toczek’s linguistic mischief… and a playful demolition of the relationship between the narrator and his characters… something of a literary accomplishment…†The Big Issue...
On my political writing:
“You should read Nick Toczek’s The Bigger Tory Vote… quite simply the best available guide to one of the most insidious forces in British political life.†The Edinburgh Review...
On my editing:
“One of the liveliest (and) perhaps the most immediately accessible of small magazines.†The Sunday Times (on my now- defunct lit mag, The Little Word Machine)...
“Rapidly becoming one of the best rock magazines and certainly the one I look forward to reading.†Radio One (DJ John Peel on my now- defunct music fanzine, The Wool City Rocker).