The People’s Favourite Poems: Out and about with Kipling, Larkin and the rest

A charming, funny and unusual poetry anthology cum memoir: a must for poetry lovers everywhere! When a mystery eye condition made looking at a screen impossible, author Gary Dexter had to rethink how to earn a living. His solution? Learn 100s of famous poems then hit the streets, approaching passers-by and offering to recite their favourite for cash. His new calling soon drags him far beyond his comfort zone. A woman orders him to ‘sway like a daffodil’ as he performs Wordsworth’s floral classic; a security guard marches him out of Primark while he defiantly intones Invictus (‘I AM THE CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL’); a drunk soldier mourning a fallen comrade requests Auden’s ‘Funeral Blues’ but turns nasty when the nervous performer fluffs a line. In a series of remarkable, eye-opening encounters, Dexter finds out which poems people really love, and why. The result is an authentic, funny and original twist on a familiar format
a poetry collection for our times. AUTHOR: Gary Dexter is the author of several acclaimed works of non-fiction, including Why Not Catch-21? Since re-inventing himself as a professional poetry botherer, he has been a regular guest on national radio, including the Jeremy Vine Show and BBC Radio 5 Live. He lives in Norwich, where he has resumed his original metier as a writer, his eyesight now restored.