Hello everybody. This is Lucy English here. I’m a novelist, spoken word poet, educator and academic. I am Professor of Creative Enterprise and The Spoken Word at Bath Spa University where I teach fiction, spoken word and live literature.
I was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in London. I studied English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia and I have an MA in Creative Writing and a Phd in Digital Writing from Bath Spa University.
I am best known as a spoken word poet, first winning the Bristol Poetry Slam in 1996 and going on to tour worldwide, performing at many international festivals. I have toured Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Taiwan for the British Council running workshops and performances. I have also run workshops for the Arvon Foundation, The Poetry Society, Apples and Snakes and the Rebecca Swift Foundation.
I co-ordinated the first International Conference in the writing and practice of performance poetry at Bath Spa University in 2003 and I have since run the first specialist performance poetry module at a UK university.
In 2010-11 I toured the UK with the acclaimed Arts Council sponsored multi-media spoken word theatre, Flash and in 2014-15 with Count Me In.
Count Me In 2014-15
I am one of the organisers of the MIX conferences in Digital Writing, the co-director, with Sarah Tremlett, of Liberated Words, which curates and screens poetry films and I am the co-director, with Danny Pandolfi, of the Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival.
I have three novels published by Fourth Estate, two poetry collections published by Burning Eye Books and my poetry film project, The Book of Hours, was shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize in 2018.
I co-edited Spoken Word in the UK, with Jack McGowan, a collection of essays published by Routledge in 2020.
Big Word. London 1997
I am currently working on more novels and more poetry films projects. If you would like to book me for a performance or reading please contact me. If you would like to find out more about workshops and mentoring please go to the Education page.
Lucy at the 1997 UK Poetry Slam Final at the Watershed.
2011 Bristol Poetry Festival with Rebecca Tantony, Sophie Hall and Vanessa Kisuule.
Looking round the door with Sarah Tremlett and Gabriele Labanauskaite at the TARP Experimental Poetry Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania 2015.
The Spoken Word class at the Albach European Forum 2018.