Steve Larkin: Fact Sheet – Information for press, writers and fans

• Steve Larkin is a performance poet, compere, singer and entertainer.

• He was born and brought up in Leeds.

• He is responsible for the launch and success of poetry scenes in The UK in The North East, Yorkshire and Oxford. He was The Co-Founder of A Poets’ Stage in Sunderland, Chicken Poetry in Leeds and Hammer And Tongue in Oxford (http://www.hammerandtongue.org).

• He started writing poems when he was ten and was consistently told that he could not do poems for homework by his teachers, poetry and physics being apparently incompatible.

• He has been semi-professional since 1994 and gave up the day job to be a full time poet ten years later.

• Before being a full-time poet he was a trainer for a fundraising organization, and before that a street fundraiser, raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for Greenpeace, Amnesty International and others. Looking further back he had some rather depressing career turns being a Team Leader in call centres telling people not to go to the toilet, being a call operator in call centres being told not to go to the toilet, and was even the unfortunate person that took the calls about broken toilets for a short and extremely unfulfilled period of time.

• Previous to this he had more fun jobs such as the one in the toy warehouse and less fun jobs in factories and warehouses watching plastic bottles go along conveyer belts, mixing noxious chemicals to make synthetic wood, packing peanuts for an evening not being paid and only having a bag of peanuts to show for it, thus literally working for peanuts. He was even a bin man for a day but did not return for another day of being chased by dogs and men with axes around estates in Seacroft. These jobs were taken to fund his way through his philosophy degree which he passed.

• Before this he was at school, before that running around a garden, before that burping, vomiting, farting and having his arse wiped by his Scottish mother and before that was just a twinkle in a giddy Yorkshireman’s eye.

• He is a keen environmentalist and has taken part in actions with Greenpeace most noticeably breaking into Sizewell B power station dressed as Homer Simpson and camping on the roof.

• He is a follower of Leeds United who will one day return to their rightful position of best and most popular team in the world. He has in his time being goalkeeper for FC Shadwell and The Huge Brown Lizards FC.

• He has been a singer/vocalist with eletronica band Valley Forge and is now the singer with Inflatable Buddha (www.inflatablebuddha.co.uk).

• He is six feet tall on a good day, and his hair changes colour regularly.