Focus: Kirsten Luckins

Who are you?
I’m Kirsten Luckins, I grew up in Teesside and I’ve been based in Hartlepool for the past decade.

What is it you do?
I’m a poet and a performer, with a big truck load of skills as a creative practitioner. Up until recently I was Producer in the North for national spoken word charity Apples and Snakes, which means I’ve supported and developed a really huge range of live performance events and workshops right across the region, from Hull and York to Sheffield, Wigan, Salford. Mostly though, I’ve spent my time helping performance poets from Tyneside and Teesside to progress their skills and careers. I’m now a freelance producer and artistic director of the Tees Women Poets collective. 

What inspires you?
I’m inspired by working with women to find their voice as writers and performers; the TWP is a real sisterhood, full of women with very diverse life experiences, and working with them to keep us all going through 2020 has been an absolute honour.

Tell us about your work / What have you got coming up in the future?
I’m in the wonderful position of having a poetry collection out this year, with acclaimed indie press Bad Betty. The collection is called Passerine, which is the term for a perching bird, and it’s a series of letters to a friend who died suddenly in 2016. It took me two years to even start it, and when I did it was by writing letters to her every day for a full twelve months. The result is somewhere between a grief journal and an almanac of the seasons in nature and in politics. The friend I’m mourning in this book was French, and spent a lot of her time migrating between family and friends in France, England and Brazil. She reminded me of a little brown bird who never perched anywhere for long, hence the title of the collection. I’m holding a Zoom launch for the collection on 25th February, live from the fabulous Drake bookshop in Stockton. I’ll be accompanied by some live origami-folding from Sunderland paper artist Ellie Clewlow, and there will be film-poems and live readings from my guest poets Alice Frecknall, Claire Trévien, Jo Colley, Jane Lovell and Linda France.

Event details : www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/launch-of-passerine-by-kirsten-luckins-tickets-13660133928

Where can people find out more about you?
My website: https://kirstenluckins.com/