A comedy poet who suffers from ME and appeared at the recent Morecambe poetry festival has published his second book of poetry. Last weekend Rich did a set at the festival which was headlined by Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Cooper Clarke, and Henry Normal.

Afterwards he said: “The festival was amazing! The audience were lovely, I was on at about 10pm and got to see Attila the Stockbroker and a chap from Liverpool called Ste the Poet, and the audience were really receptive and encouraging for all the performers. I'm still shielding really until the R rate goes down due to clobbered ME immune system, so unfortunately, I didn't get to see a lot of my faves like LKJ and JCC, but the general feedback was that it had been fantastic all weekend.”

There was good feedback for Rich’s own festival performance from fellow performance poet Kate Fox, who said: “Rich is a hilarious performer and poet, very much in the classic Northern comic mould – a hint of Peter Kay, a touch of Victoria Wood and Henry Normal. [He] had the audience in the palm of his hand.” 

Rich’s new book of comedy poems, Horsetrousers (Blue Gnu Books), is available rom www.richdavenport.com/shop. His first book of poems, Gormless, was published by Chinbeard Books in 2020.

Praise for Rich's second book has included these words from fellow performance poet Nick Toczek: “Don't just read this bloody brilliant book, seek him out on YouTube, go to his gigs, worship in the universal front room of his spellbinding voice. There are precious few unpretentious geniuses in this world. They’re the people who slice clean through pomposity and preciousness. Let’s cherish them.”