John Row (poet)

John Row is a storyteller with strong roots in Ipswich, UK. He was born in 1947. He tours schools and other institutions such as prisons, not only within the UK, he has a strong presence in Texas where he has performed in detention centres for the young inmates. He was the first storyteller in residence in a British prison and has recently completed a writing residency at H.M.P. Highpoint in Suffolk.

He is a regular performer at festivals throughout the U.K. and runs the storytelling tent in the kidz field at Glastonbury Festival and the storytelling area at Cambridge Folk Festival.He has a weekly radio show on Ipswich Community Radio one of the first community radio stations in the county which now has a full time license.

He is a regular contributor to 'On Track' a magazine for rail travellers in the Southern Region.Touring with singer/songwriter Paddy Stratton he is one half of 'Serious Times', a music and poetry show.This takes him back to his poetic roots. Performing in the 1960's he joined up with Graham Flight from the Canterbury band 'Wild Flowers' which spawned both 'Soft Machine' and 'Caravan'. In the '70's he toured with Nick Toczeck in 'Stereo Graffiti' and in the eighties and early nineties with 'Sound Proposition' an anarchic combination of free form jazz, funk and poetry which toured East Germany in the last weeks of its existence.

Throughout the late nineties and the first half of the first decade of the twenty first century he concentrated on storytelling apart from on his visits to Texas where he appeared at the Austin International Poetry Festival. His book of poems for children 'The Pong Machine' was published in 1999.

External links

* [http://www.johnrow.com/ John Row, Storyteller]