An Evening with the Door-to-Door Poet | Rowan McCabe

Tuesday 16th April 2026 | 6pm

An Evening with the Door-to-Door Poet

Rowan McCabe is the world’s first Door-to-Door Poet. Knocking on strangers’ doors, he asks what is important to them. He then goes away and writes a poem about it, free of charge, before returning to deliver it a few weeks later. It’s a bit like the Avon lady, but with rhymes.

Starting in his home town of Heaton in Newcastle, Rowan took the idea across the length and breadth of the country, visiting places as diverse as Moss Side in Manchester, a town with the largest population of Nobel Prize winners in the world and the isolated island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel.

In September 2025 Rowan’s latest book, The Door-to-Door Poet, was published by Eye Books. In it, he shares the story of his adventures, as well as the poems he wrote for the residents along the way. The Door-to-Door Poet was featured in the Radio Times and on BBC Breakfast. It became a #1 bestseller on Amazon and was described by presenter Stuart Maconie as ‘Very funny and very charming’.

Rowan will be in conversation with award-winning writer, Harry Pearson. Join us for a fabulous evening of poems and patter as Rowan reflects on some of the most unusual and unexpected encounters he had on the doorsteps of the nation.

Harry Pearson has been writing for a living for over four decades. He has twice won the MCC/Cricket Society Book of the Year Prize and has been runner-up for both the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book of the Year. Born in the North Riding of Yorkshire, he has lived in Northumberland for the past thirty years.

A LIVE Lit & Phil Event | £8/£5 concession

(If you would prefer to book directly over the phone, please call the Library Desk team on 0191 232 0192 and they will be happy to help)

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