Bob Beagrie
Playwright, Poet, Short-story writer
About
Bob Beagrie is a widely published working-class poet whose work draws upon and reconfigures the tradition of epic verse, employing a historio-mythographic approach to articulating contemporary social tensions. Collections such as The Seer Sung Husband (Smokestack Books, 2010), Leásungspell (Smokestack Books, 2016), Civil Insolencies (Smokestack Books, 2019) Eftwyrd, (Smokestack Books, 2023) and Romanceros: Poems Inspired by the Spanish Civil War (Drunk Muse Press, 2024), bring episodes of historical upheaval into contemporary perspectives and view the conditions of current unrest, disquiet and struggle through a historical lens. Known for linguistic and stylistic experimentation with vernacular and dialect forms Beagrie has been called ‘a writer of depth and daring’ (Fran Lock) whose processes involve ‘rewilding’ language’ (Claire Hélie). His poetry has appeared in numerous international anthologies, journals and magazines and has been translated into Finnish, Urdu, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Estonian, Tamil, German, French, and Gaelic. He performs as a solo spoken-word artist as well as collaborating with musicians, theatre-makers, film-makers, dancers and visual artists.
Much of his writing is inspired by grassroots literature development which has included community publishing, performance, creative writing, story-making and drama projects, with the aim of providing platforms for the articulation of often-marginalised voices and using the literary arts as a vehicle for social critique, cohesion and consultation.
Bob lives in Middlesbrough and his writing is rooted in people’s histories, folklore, urban and rural mythologies and the diasporic stories of the area. While predominantly a poet he also occasionally writes short stories and stage-plays.