Biography

 

Jeremy Reed, born on a chip of rock off the French Normandy coast has been for decades Britain’s most dynamic, adventurous, controversial and futures poet. Called by the Independent ‘British poetry’s glam, spangly, shape-shifting answer to David Bowie’, his poetry, fiction and performances of his work are singularly inimitable in their opposition to grey mainstream poetry. He has published over 40 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, winning prestigious literary prizes like the Somerset Maugham Award, and was on his coming to live in London in the 1980s patronised by the artist Francis Bacon. His biggest fans are J.G. Ballard, Pete Doherty and Bjork who has called his work ‘the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.’ Jeremy writes about every subject that British poetry considers taboo, glamour, pop, rock, sci-fi, cyber, mutant, gay, drugs, neuroscientific, the disaffected and outlawed, and the fizzy big city chemistry of the London in which he lives and creates. His performances solo, or with The Ginger Light are unrivalled in intensity. In recent years he has published the first book-length poem on Elvis Presley, Heartbreak Hotel (Orion), Saint Billie (Enitharmon) a book-length poem on Billie Holiday, Orange Sunshine an epic poem on 1960s pop culture, Duck and Sally Inside and This is How You Disappear (both Enitharmon) a book of elegies for dead and missing friends, a biography of Anna Kavan "Stranger On Earth", a novel The Grid (Peter Owen) and his upcoming book of poetry Piccadilly Bongo will contain a 4 track CD from the singer Marc Almond. Amongst his many forthcoming publications are John Stephen King of Carnaby Street and the 1960s look and a book of sci-fi poems Honey I Need with an introduction by J.G. Ballard. He works and performs with musician Itchy Ear as The Ginger Light and is available for private parties, functions, corporate events, fashion launches, festivals and London spectaculars.

 

‘Jeremy Reed is a legend. What more can you fucking ask?’ Pete Doherty

‘Jeremy Reed’s talent is almost extraterrestrial in its brilliance. He is Rimbaud reconfigured as the Man who fell to Earth, a visitor from deep space whose time machine was designed by Lautreamont and de Sade, and powered by the most exotic fuels the imagination has ever devised.’ J.G. Ballard

‘In its detail and ambition alone, Orange Sunshine confirms Reed’s place as a great lyric poet of pop’s shadow.’ Michael Bracewell

‘The most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world’. Bjork

‘When Patti Smith meets Rimbaud at Graceland, the result is Jeremy Reed’s Heartbreak Hotel’. Edmund White

‘Jeremy Reed is the real definition of British poetry now and deserves to be worshipped himself’. Richard Hell

‘One of the most original virtuoso voices to be heard in the poetry of our time’. Lawrence Ferlinghetti

‘The man is light worlds apart from his contemporaries in poetry’. Andrew Loog Oldham

‘Reed’s poetry is full of rich and careful writing, dense with pleasure in words that pleasure the world and waken us to its lovely surprises’. Seamus Heane.