2 Weeks of Words: Martin Johns poetry drop in

This event is aimed at adults (as we've done loads in Week 1 to do with poetry for young people!).

Martin will be on hand to read you some of his poetry, offer you some tips and/or get you to have a go!

Martin was born in south Wales but has lived in Towcester for the past 44 years. Widely published in magazines and anthologies, he has read at venues including the Poetry Society’s Poetry Café in London, the International Anthony Burgess Centre in Manchester, and at the Manchester Royal Exchange with former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. He has collaborated with composers at the Royal Northern College of Music and Birmingham Conservatoire. His poem Polaris was set to music by Bobby-Jane Gardener and performed at Leeds Lieder Festival in 2013. While in 2018 cellist Milena Karakova composed music inspired by Martin’s poem The Sweetness of Paris.

In 2023, he was poet in residence at Old Rectory Garden, Quinton, near Northampton, writing a poem a month to chart the seasons across the year.

Martin earned an MA with Merit in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2016. His pamphlets Resting Place (2019) and Tipping Winter into Spring (2022) are published by Palewell Press, and he won the 2025 Milton Keynes Literary Festival poetry competition.

In June 2026, he contributed poems inspired by What is Lost? What Remains? an art exhibition at Winterbourne House in Birmingham.