Mark Gwynne Jones

Four times fringe-award winner, Mark Gwynne Jones is well known for mind altering poetry with an almost music-hall edge. He mixes humour and poignancy with great skill and through collaborations with film-makers and musicians he is pushing poetry in new and exciting directions. Mark’s work is contagious, gritty and sometimes startlingly sensitive.

‘Inspired… one of the most accomplished performance poets in the land…drawing the audience into a world where things are not quite what they seem’ The Guardian

‘Astonishing…you’ll love this show!’
The Daily Mail

‘The brilliant Mark Gwynne Jones. Passionate…captivating and slightly mad, mind altering poetry’ Edinburgh Three Weeks

‘Mark Gwynne Jones should be ruined with fame and money before he shows the rest of us up for the bunch of sissies we are. But if you don’t want the truth, don’t call a poet, at least not a real one.’ Martin Newell, The Independent

‘I always stipulate that who ever is on with me hasn’t got to be any good – this one got past me – I don’t know how, but heads will roll.’
John Cooper Clarke

Appearing solo and with The Psychicbread, a show combining poetry and music Mark has toured with Kate Rusby and performed alongside The Levellers, Alan Bates, Mark Radcliffe and John Peel favourites Half Man Half Biscuit. He has sold poetry to the CIA; written poetry with disenfranchised kids in some of the most deprived areas of Britain and held writing residencies at The Harley Gallery; The Cornerhouse Cinema, Manchester; Sudbury Prison and with Service Children’s Education in the Netherlands, Germany and Cyprus. Mark regularly performs at Ronnie Scott’s, the Edinburgh Festival, The Arvon Foundation and at music and literature festivals throughout the UK and abroad. In 2008 Loughborough University commissioned Mark to write a series of poems for a performance walk and following the event’s success, Gunpowder Parks commissioned him to write in and around four of London’s central parks exploring what is meant by ‘common ground’ in 21st century Britain. Mark has won The National Trust Poetry Competition and the Buxton Festival Fringe. He has staged multi-media shows with artists in Glasgow, Copenhagen and Amsterdam and appeared on a compilation CD alongside new work by Rick Wakeman, Gordon Giltrap and Roy Harper (The Sky Goes all the Way Home, Voiceprint Records).

With film-maker Andy Lawrence, Mark has produced a unique series of 6 film-poems. It’s Only Water was broadcast byITV and The Message, a screenplay mixing poetry and drama, ran for seven nights on SKY television.