Adrian Green

Biography

Lives overlooking the sea at Southend, Essex, the county where he was born. Performed at : Billericay Arts Centre, BBC Radio Essex, Colchester Arts Centre, Cramphorn Theatre (Chelmsford), The Poetry Cafe (Covent Garden), Cabaret Voltaire (Colchester), Dangerous Poetry (Southend), Essex Poetry Festival, Harlow Playhouse, The Jazz Lab, Leigh Folk Festival, National Book League, Odyssey Folk Club, Palace Theatre (Westcliff), Peggy Sue's poetry (Leigh), Poetry Cafe (Covent Garden), Southend Library, The Southend Poetry Group, Club Riga (Westcliff), Southend Pier, Sundown (Southend), Torriano Meeting House and other places. Led workshops at: Essex Poetry Festival, Southend Library, The Southend Poetry Group. Has edited Sol magazine and has been reviews editor of Littoral magazine. Poems have been published in Acumen, Chimera, Envoi, Essex Countryside, Global Tapestry, In Praise of Essex, Iron, Marble, New Essex Writing, Openings, Poet’s England – Essex, Poems for Jeremy Corbyn (Shoestring), Poetry in Practice, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prole, Provincia Corvina (Romania), Pro Saeculum (Romania), Psychopoetica, Reach, Selected Poems of the UK (Spiny Babbler, Nepal), Sol, Southend Poetry, The Interpreter’s House, The Morning Star, The Unsaid Goodnight (Stride), Waves and several other magazines and collections. The latest collection, New Blues and Other Poems (2023, ISBN 978-1-912412-52-5) is available from The Littoral Press. All That Jazz and Other Poems (Oct 2018, ISBN 978-1-912412-11-2), is available from The Littoral Press. See review at https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=83933 Co-edited From the City to the Saltings - Poems from Essex (ISBN 978-0-9926887-0-7) for the Essex Poetry Festival (2013) Previous publications include Chorus and Coda (Dec 2007, ISBN 978-0-9550926-7-1), from The Littoral Press. Two earlier pamphlets from Sol Publications, Beachgame (1977) and The Watchers (1977) are now out of print. Primarily based in Essex and London. See website http://www.greenad.co.uk

Samples - Three Poems

STRING BASS Some like to dominate, others caress a voluptuous rhythm on pliant strings. This pulse drives life through wanton counterpoint, the heart and harmony of things. ADRIAN GREEN from Chorus and Coda (Littoral Press, 2007) FINDING YOU The preacher, the tailor, the builder, the poet, the sailors (enough to make a crew), the mothers who worked, the artist, and others with nothing to do – finding could somehow be expected from tracing you through seas and continents and the counties you walked by happenstance of birth or work, from scouring the data, disturbing the dust and scratching moss from graveyard stones, but not knowing what made you laugh, or cry, or gave you the satisfaction of being, remains a mystery, a kind of sadness. I may never know which parts of you survive through me or who in turn my daughter’s child may live to be. ADRIAN GREEN from All That Jazz and Other Poems (Littoral Press, 2018) JAZZ AT THE ROYAL - NOW AND THEN The open room with airy views sits lightly on the memory of smoke-filled cellar bars where jazz sounds curled around the darkened alcoves and the pillars holding up the floor above, the players timed their choruses and breaks to cigarettes left smouldering on music stands, while sweat and smoke merged in an atmosphere we did not know was there until we came out to the early morning air, but now we sit in comfort, breathing clear, foot tapping to those bebop tunes, and nodding sagely to the sounds made classical by passing time, their menace calmed by intervening years. This is the better world we tell ourselves, while sipping froth from our expensive beers. The music is the same, though now we hear it differently and cannot imagine how our heirs will hear it in their time. Adrian Green from New Blues & Other Poems (Littoral Press, 2023) (Broadcast on BBC Essex, 1 June 2023)

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.