Nathan Penlington

Nathan Penlington
Nathan Penlington performing at Howl, Poetry Link Chelmsford 2009. Image by Caroline Joy Watson
Occupation	Poet,
Nationality	United Kingdom

Nathan Penlington (born in Rhyl, North Wales), is a poet, writer, live literature producer and magician. His work has appeared on stage, in print and on the radio.

Career

Nathan Penlington currently performs at venues and festivals across the UK, Europe and the US, and has shared stages with performers such as John Cooper Clarke, Ricky Gervais and Phill Jupitus. His performances fuse comedy, storytelling and magic with writing that led Robert Newman to describe him as "a natural performer, witty, inventive, stylish and original", and Time Out to comment that "Nathan Penlington's fusion of wit, storytelling and visuals are garnering critics’ plaudits and attention".^[1]

Penlington was co-organiser and resident host of London's weekly spoken word venue Shortfuse, from April 2000 to September 2007. Shortfuse attained a reputation for presenting an eclectic fusion of stand-up poetry, performance comedy and music, and regularly presenting up-and-coming performers alongside established names such as John Hegley, Stewart Lee, Kevin Eldon and Simon Munnery, as well as forging working links with performers across the US, Canada and Europe. Shortfuse became renowned for creating new formats including Bards in their Eyes, Speed Cabaret, and Poetry Idol. Poetry Idol's tongue in cheek competition format helped to bring wider attention to many up and coming poets and performers including Scroobius Pip, Stephen Howarth, Suzanne Andrade, Joshua Idehen and Musa Okwanga.

He has been employed to produce and host events for a wide variety of festivals including the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Brick Lane Festival, Stoke Newington Festival and Whitstable Arts Biennale. He was Festival Director for Write to Ignite - Hackney Word Festival,^[2] which took place throughout September 2007.

In 2005, Penlington performed his debut full length solo spoken word show If My Life Hadn't Turned Out Differently at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the Pleasance, after previewing the show at Chicago’s Drinking & Writing Festival, and in a variety of venues in New York including the renowned Bowery Poetry Club. In the following year, he made his 5th consecutive appearance at the festival, teaming up with two other spoken word artists, Rhian Edwards and Suzanne Andrade, to produce a show called Invisible Ink which fused magic, music, poetry and animation to critical acclaim.

Penlington is Poetry Editor for The Fix Magazine - the UK's only monthly comedy magazine, which is distributed free at comedy venues across the country.

His work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3's The Verb, performing a work of 'predictive text poetry - a new creative form using the mobile phone'.^[3] He has also appeared on BBC Radio 4's 28 Acts in 28 Minutes, and he has hosted two series of the surreal spoken word show Parlour Games on Resonance FM.

Published works

April 2008 saw the publication of Almost Nearly, a full-length collection of graphic poems in a limited signed and numbered edition. It features some of the poems included in Roadkill on the Digital Highway, which was short-listed for the Eric Gregory Award 2005, of which previous winners include Seamus Heaney and Andrew Motion.

Penlington's work has appeared in publications such as Rising, The Fix, Quiet Feather, Litmus, The Delinquent, Aesthetica magazine, The Rebel magazine, and X-Magazine.

References

1. ^ http://www.timeout.com/london/features/1973/1.html
2. ^ http://www.writetoignite.co.uk/
3. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/theverb/pip/yijgn/

• Time Out Article: Secret Scenes

External links

• Official Myspace

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