Ian Horn, ‘the footy poet’ was born in County Durham, poet Ian Horn has performed in various venues throughout the UK and in Europe. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival, the Glastonbury Festival, Wychwood Festival, Hexham Book Festival, Tubingen Book Festival (Germany), Lake Orta lit Fest in Italy and at venues in France, Portugal, Holland, Ireland and Hungary.
As part of Euro’ 96 he was writer in residence at the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool and he worked for the British Council in Portugal during Euro 2004. He was commissioned by BBC radio 5 to write a poem for The Death of Football series and he has also recorded a poem for Danish TV with the English Premiership and Denmark goalkeeper Thomas Sorensen. As a genuine troubadour of the beautiful game he has appeared in over 60 Schools and Colleges throughout Britain. In 2000 he was awarded a Northern Promise Award from the literary development agency New Writing North.
He worked on the juice project for New Writing North as part of their work in Schools. In 2005 he collaborated with Northern Sinfonia on a sound/ text response to the music of Mozart. Recent commissions include working with the government agency ‘culture north east’ to promote the region, a public art sculpture for Middlehaven Dock regeneration project in Middlesbrough and the British Council in Amsterdam in association with philosophy football (Holland v England). He is an active committee member of Colpitts Poetry which has been promoting literature in Durham City since 1975.
Workshops
For over 10 years now I have been presenting The Poetry of Football workshops and performances based on the anthology ‘Verses United’.
I have devised a classroom- based celebration of the form with my Fantasy Football Poetry League for all abilities and age groups.
Feedback
‘They realised they had something they could write about.This was the best workshop we had done, simply because it was a much more active way of doing poetry. There was so much feeling generated. Mike Tracy, West Derby Boys Comp, Merseyside.*
‘The notion of using football as a way to encourage boys is something we should be exploring, but even the girls were quite able to engage in what was going on’. One girl produced a prize winning poem using the contest between two teams as a metaphor for marital disharmony’ Lynne Wright, Kirkley High School, Lowestoft.
Books
His publications include ‘Verses United’, an anthology of football poetry published by Durham Books to great acclaim in the Times Literary Supplement
‘Proof as if any were needed that football and poetry are synonymous. Who’d have thought that Stuart Hall and Tony Harrison could play together in the same team’
Nick Hornby
Also, a pamphlet ‘Jazz from the Collieries’.
His most recent collection is “The Singing Ducks of Amiens’ published by Mudfog.
‘This is a distinguished debut by one of the likely lads of North-East poetry’. Stephen Regan, Professor of English, Durham University.