Philip Wells has taken his one-man poetry renaissance everywhere from 11 Downing Street to The Brixton Fridge, from Westminster Abbey to Channings Wood Prison, from Warwick Castle to Basingstoke Street Market, from Portsmouth Theatre Royal to The Edinburgh Fringe, from Newsnight to BBC Radio Four; in front of Robbie Williams, Joanna Lumley, 1100 Barnet schoolgirls, hordes of 3 year olds wielding balloon swords, Andrew Motion, Chairmen of multinationals and Mayors and the mentally ill, the gifted and the profoundly disabled; in underground trains, trance rooms, crypts and Claridges; from schooners, beer barrels in beyond-the-barricades pubs, ancient megaliths and The Whispering Gallery of St Paul's Cathedral; beside hospital beds, Victorian operating tables, statues of dolphins and open-air Glastonbury candles.

Poet-in-residence at The Chelsea & Westminster Hospital School for the last four years, where he works with psychiatrically needy and profoundly disabled children, Philip has collaborated with fire jugglers, shamanic drummers, electric cellists, calligraphers, the photographer David Bailey, carnival mask-makers and artists, legendary ex-Scorpions electric guitarist Uli Jon Roth and the rock bands Morcheeba and Zero 7. Over eighty of his poems have been published in literary magazines, and he has written commissioned poems about The London Eye for Channel 4, an ode to fashion written on women's bodies across eight pages of Harpers & Queen, a modern Canterbury Tale for The Canterbury Festival and poems for an art exhibition with Levi's ad creator John Hegarty. He has written a spoken word opera about Thomas Becket with composer Stephen Barlow to be performed in 2006 in Canterbury Cathedral. In October 2003 he went on his own Arts Council-funded tour with an internationally-renowned string quartet and tabla player to leading festival venues across the UK including Manchester, Hull, Warwick, Sheffield and Cheltenham.

Philip has published a children's book, Daddy Island (Barefoot Books), and he has self-published two stunningly innovative poetry collections, the last of which has just sold all of its 1000 copies. He has written an epic children's poem (for 8-11 year olds) called The Alien Guide From Inner Space, which Barefoot's editor described as "a masterpiece." His new 200-poem collection is due out in September 2005 and he has just finished his first novel, Two Journeys.

For commissions, school work, collaborative ideas and further information, please email: thefirepoet@aol.com

Full of surprises, life and art
TED HUGHES

His poetry is a revelation... there is a freshness to his vision and a purity to his imagination, both conveyed in idiom and imagery which have nothing expected or hackneyed
THE SCOTSMAN

The foremost performance poet in England
EVENING STANDARD

The real Poet Laureate
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