List Of Writers

BROOKES, J.

Born 1951 in South East London. Left school as soon as possible and stayed in Britain only long enough to be kicked–out of Leeds Art College before going abroad. Spent next ten years, thumb–out, zig-zagging Europe and Middle East before landing-up in Belfast in the mid 70s. Worked there a couple of years then applied to do a degree at The University of Ulster, Coleraine. English Department full of poetry (Derek Mahon Poet in Residence, James Simmons and Frank McGuinness lecturers, Heaney a frequent. visitor). Taught English for several years in the Sudan, then Turkey, then, pausing only to do a Masters at Sheffield, took a job first as a cleaner, then a nursing assistant in a Brighton psychiatric hospital. Fell in love with a Welsh woman and moved to Cardiff in 1990.

Started The Yellow Crane (successor to The Cardiff Poet) in 1995. Several pamphlets, amongst which are Dusting the Bin (Red Sharks Press, 1994), an account in poems of working as a cleaner in a psychiatric hospital, and The Deafening Nose (The Profitless Press, 2001), a prose-poem account of a long day’s walk around Cardiff with excited and despairing thoughts.

Selected Publications:
Dusting the Bin (Red Sharks Press, 1994)
43 Poems (The Profitless Press, 2000)
The Deafening Nose (The Profitless Press, 2001)
The Nylon Machines (The Profitless Press, 2006)
Nobby: Prince of Wales (The Profitless Press, 2006)