Performance poet Nick Toczek has received an Outstanding Contribution award from Bradford University in recognition of his long-standing and diverse career with Bradford's arts and culture sector as a poet, musician, writer, performer and journalist.

In an interview with the university Nick said: “I’ve never chased rewards. I don’t enter competitions, I don’t depend on approval from outside. This honour came completely out of the blue and, to be honest, my initial response was embarrassment. However, to get this award from the university - my local university - really means something.”

The award recognises Nick’s cultural contribution over many years. In an interview with Write Out Loud in 2020 he looked back at his early days, and of ‘ranting poetry’ in the 1980s, saying: “When I started out as a performer-poet in the late sixties (influenced by the US Beat poets and the UK Liverpool poets plus others - many of whom later became friends) I had this naive faith in the spoken word. I'd get up and gig in pubs and working men’s clubs where there had never been a poet. I had a missionary zeal which still drives me today.

“Ranting poetry really put that bit between its teeth which is why I loved being a part of it (which I was, albeit older than many of my fellow performers - JCC [John Cooper Clarke], Swells [Steven 'Seething' Wells], Little Brother, Ben Zephaniah, LKJ [Linton Kwesi Johnson] and dozens of others). It was an extraordinary time. I ran punk and skinhead gigs around West Yorkshire throughout the early 1980s and ran alternative cabaret gigs in the late 1980s ... all were amazing. I'd got into punk in 1976 when I started going to punk gigs in Birmingham (where I was living) ... saw the Clash in Sept 1976 and dozens more punk band including the Ramones during 1977. Punk changed my life.”

During the Covid lockdown - when he was writing a poem a day about the pandemic- and afterwards Nick Toczek put in regular appearances with Write Out Loud Woking on Zoom.

As the Covid inquiry progresses, it’s worth looking back at what Nick said In his interview with Write Out Loud in September 2020. We asked him: “In your poems written in July and August, you seem to know in advance that the infection rates would increase as a result of pubs reopening, the government drive to persuade people to eat out, and schools going back, too. How does it feel to be proved so right? Unnerving?” 

Nick replied: “I've been a researcher and investigative journalist for many years. Writing these viral poems, I've done a huge amount of research following 'the science' (for real, not as our government pretends to do). Also, I'm married to a senior manager in the NHS. I've made it my job to keep pace with the thinking and the genuine fears. Back in January, for example, I was mocked by almost everyone I knew when I bought (from China) 200 facemasks, half a dozen visors, 200 pairs of gloves and a load of handwash. That whole lot cost me less than twenty quid! I'd been in affected countries during SARS and other health scares. I took it seriously from the very outset. When you do the research, there's nothing uncanny or unnerving about what you write, except for how scary the truth is that you declare.”

Along with the good people of Bradford University, we say thank-you to Nick, for his regular, inspirational appearances at Write Out Loud Woking on Zoom for a number of years, and for all that he has done for poetry over the decades!