BRIAN DOCHERTY: born Glasgow, lived in north London for 40 years, now lives on the Sussex coast as part of a growing community of writers, artists and musicians. He is known as the Beach Bard of St. Leonards.

Educated at several institutions, including Middlesex Poly. University of Essex, London University Institute of Education, and St. Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill. His CV features an implausible variety of jobs, including civil servant, hospital storeman, market trader, artists model, lecturer, and freelance writer.

From 1978 to 2015, he was a member of various workshops and poetry groups, including Camden Voices, Vertical Images, Islington Poetry Workshop and Word for Word. He is presently a member of Shorelink Writers, Words For Wellbeing Writers Group, Hastings Stanza Group, and TLS Writers. He is currently a Director of the Austin International Poetry Festival.

He has published seven books: Armchair Theatre (Hearing Eye, 1999); Desk with a View (Hearing Eye, 2008); Woke Up This Morning (Smokestack Books, 2012); Independence Day (Penniless Press, 2015); In My Dreams, Again (Penniless Press, 2017); Only in St. Leonards: A Year on the Marina (Special Sorts Press, 2017); Blue To The Edge: for Rosemary, in Remembrance (Independent Publishing Network, 2020).

Read the interview on the Poetry Kit website and the interview on Wombwell Rainbow.

By the same author:

As Editor:  

ed., with Tony Clelford & Deborah Eagle, Scribes and Passions An Anthology of New Writing by Word for Word (London: New Gallery Books, 1998)

ed., with Tony Clelford & Deborah Eagle, Into the Empty Space: A 2nd Anthology of New Writing by Word for Word (London: New Gallery books, 1999)

ed., with Angharad Ellis Jones & Elissa Swinglehurst, Life, Death, Sex & Chocolate A 3rd Anthology of New Writing by Word for Word (London : New Gallery Books, 2002).

Criticism:

ed., with Clive Bloom, Jane Gibb & Keith Shand, Nineteenth Century Suspense. from Poe to Conan Doyle (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988)

ed. American Crime Fiction: Studies in the Genre (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988) ed. American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990)

ed. Twentieth Century European Drama ( Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994)

ed., with Clive Bloom, American Poetry: The Modernist Ideal (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995) ed., with Gary Day, British Poetryl900 -1950. Aspects of Tradition (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995)

ed., with Gary Day, British Poetry from the 1950s to the 1990s. Politics and Art (Basingstoke:   Macmillan, 1997)

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