Jonny Croose

Creative writing has been ‘a consistent feature’ in the life of Jonny Croose. Born in Wales, raised in The Wash and now based in Norwich, he has worked as a news reporter, written plays and produced academic papers on culture and performance. Although he has been producing poetry throughout, Croose only began writing for publication in the last five years. In that time his work has been published in publications and journals including the Bangor Literary Journal, Ink Sweat and Tears, Spelt, Loud Coffee Press and Places of Poetry.

Croose’s love of poetry began at primary school, with Richard Burton’s 1971 reading of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, and he later ‘fell for Shakespeare and The Beat Poets’. He found further influence in the early 2000s through poets such as Polly Carr, Pete Hunter, Julian and Christine Ramsay-Wade and Lucy English, and more recently with the performance poetry of Joelle Taylor. Croose is particularly drawn to poetry’s ability to ‘transport us’ and how ‘a poem can expand the world or contract it into an intense everyday detail’. He views poetry as ‘a shared experience’, and says of poetry performances that ‘to be there, in community, sharing diverse human experience, feels like a liberating, radical act’.

‘I think poetry is at the heart of all artforms, whether its ideas are communicated through words, speech, text, music, movement, or image’

Though he loves ‘the process of poetic creation,’ it’s in live performance that Croose ‘gets [his] kicks as both a listener and a performer’, which he attributes to his background in theatre. And he strongly believes that ‘a well-delivered poem can hold a room in the same way that great theatre does’. Through A Poet in Every Port, Croose is ‘really looking forward to exploring Great Yarmouth with fresh eyes, seeing how the town works on [him] poetically, and being part of a poetic connection with other port towns’ across the country.