Eulogies for dead cats. The rising price of Freddos. Ballerinas made of kebab meat.
These are the riotous, strange and sometimes tender words of T.S. IDIOT, a poet once deemed to be in very poor taste by their hometown council. These are words on queerness, on class, on love and loss and whatever else we find congealed in the cracks of every day life. These words are to laugh at. These words are to shout and cry at. These words are for you. T.S. IDIOT is a queer post-punk poet living and working across the UK. A self-taught writer and performer, they cut their teeth on DIY punk gigs and community theatre projects and have since written and produced work for BBC Arts, UNESCO and the Tate. They were shortisted for the 2023 Outspoken Prize for Poetry in Film and the Pomegranate Poetry Prize and have been published in anthologies by Perennial Press, Sassify, Ample Press, Queerlings and HUCK. They have appeared on stages at festivals, dive bars and poetry nights across the UK and internationally, including shows with indie, punk and poetry icons (Attila The Stockbroker, John Cooper Clarke, Subway Sect, Penelope Isles, TV Smith). Their debut collection Back To The Fuchsia was published by Arkbound / Palavro Press in 2024. They are a regular on the UK spoken word scene including headline and feature sets with Milk Poetry, Raise The Bar, Verve Poetry Festival and Apples & Snakes. |
"A spoken word phenomena" - Voice Magazine
"Lighthearted but bittersweet" - Fringe Review "Rambunctious and moving" - Milk Poetry "A proper punk" - Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) "Skillfully disobedient" - Pete The Temp "A performer that resonates with everyone's experience" - Revolv "Angry, playful and heartfully earnest" - The Friday Poem "Weird stuff... a cross between Suicide and John Cooper Clarke" - Attila The Stockbroker "Rhythmical and exhilarating, they force you to read aloud" - Taproot Press "I thought I was going to get hypnotised" - Kerry Katona "A powerful example of a writer stopping the reader in their tracks" - Rosie Garland "A wry and funny voice that peeks through the pain, and creates a singularly human experience" - Malaika Kegode "Tom faces his demons and lays them bare" - TV Smith "I’m so in love with their style, their way onto the stage and into people’s memories just by simply being themsleves. They have something that I look for in my favourite artists - no reserve but fear, fear that they channel and command in their work to bring authenticity into their utter nonsense." - Bridget Hart |
