Chris Hardy lives in London and has lived and travelled in Africa, Asia and Europe. His poems have been published in many magazines, anthologies and websites including –
Acumen; Agenda; Brittle Star; Lakeview International Journal; Obsessed With Pipework; Orbis; Pennine Platform; Poetry Review; Prole; RAUM; South; South Bank Poetry; Stand; Tears In The Fence; The Dark Horse; The Fenland Reed; The Forward Prize Anthology; The Frogmore Papers; The Interpreter’s House; The Moth; The North; The Rialto; The SHop; Under The Radar; Urthona; Wasafiri
 
and online at –
 
clearpoetry.wordpress.com; huffingtonpost.com; londongrip.co.uk; morphrog.com; peacockjournal.com; picaroonpoetry.wordpress.com; salonoftherefused.com; snakeskin.co.uk; sentinelquarterly.com; inksweatandtears.co.uk; thecompassmagazine.co.uk; threedropspoetry.co.uk.
 
His third collection, Write Me A Few Of Your Lines, was published by Graft Poetry.
 

An intensely enjoyable collection

 

John Lucas

 
 

I found wonders in many of Hardy’s lines

 

Anne Stevenson

 
 

He is also a musician: a CD of acoustic music, Health To Your Hands is available from cdbaby.com
 

You can easily imagine his name being mentioned in the same sentence as John Renbourn or Eric Anderson … well worth checking out

 

Guitar Magazine

 
 

 

The picking is glorious and the songwriting excellent

 

Acoustic magazine

 
 

He is a member of the trio LiTTLe MACHiNe – www.little-machine.com – performing settings of well known poems. The trio has appeared with Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke, Liz Lochhead, John Cooper Clarke, John Hegley, Liz Berry, Hannah Lowe and other poets. They have made a new album, The Likes of Us, with Roger McGough and are performing at literary events across the country with him.
 
See LiTTLe MACHiNewebsite for available albums and prices.
 

The most brilliant music and poetry band in the world

 

Carol Ann Duffy

 
 

 

His fourth collection, Sunshine at the end of the world, is published in August 2017 by Indigo Dreams. The book is described, commented on, and available to buy here (or direct from Chris by e-mail or by hand at a LiTTLe MACHiNe gig!).
 
At World’s End in Chelsea hides the quiet, strange, Moravian graveyard. It is said the dead are buried standing upright, beneath the small, square grave stones set in grass. The poems in this collection balance themes of time and fate, family and war, loss and regret, with acceptance of how things are and the beautiful mystery of living on this earth.
 

The acute poems of this wonderfully named fourth collection are always clear, sometimes rueful. Amongst wars and rissoles, they cherish their ghosts. Past and present are summoned by memorable lines with strength and tenderness.

 

Alison Brackenbury

 
 

Bird nesting in mailbox. Rat scrabbling in cavity wall. Spring uncoiling and a welcoming harbour. A guitarist as well as a poet Chris Hardy consistently hits the right note, never hits a false note.

 

Roger McGough

 
 

These poems explore Time, from the tender appreciation of new life, through all its vicissitudes, to death: Time alters, enhances, destroys. They deserve to be read slowly, to appreciate the many and varied nuances which lead to the comprehension of the Now.

 

Patricia Oxley, Editor, Acumen Literary Journal

 
 

Key to the Highway was published in 2021 by Shoetring Press. Comments:
 

This fascinating, wide ranging collection hums with music and life. These are poems about the slide of strings on a fretboard; sensual, tactile, full of smells and colour, but often they come back to the sense of music in a minor chord…

 

Deborah Alma (The Emergency Poet, The Poetry Pharmacy, Bishops Castle).

 
 

When you think you know where you are in a Chris Hardy poem, look again, because the ground is uncertain and there is a growing sense of unease that the time for leisurely reading may run out before he writes the last line, or the calendar rips out its pages. These are poems with an eye on fable and desert snakes, and an ear out for the music words make in the quiet of a page. The Key to the Highway is yours for the taking, so adventure away!

 

Helen Ivory (poet/artist/tutor/editor)