Ian Horn 

biography	poetry	contact
	View without prejustice, 2000
	Acting the goat, 2001

BIOGRAPHY

Born in County Durham, poet and publisher Ian Horn is a member of the Northern Voices creative writing and community publishing project which specialises in recording the experiences of people in the North East of England.
He has performed his poetry on several occasions at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at Festivals in The Netherlands supported by the British Council. He has also toured in France and Germany. Ian Horn visited the European Parliament in Strasbourg with fellow poet Keith Armstrong and musicians Pete Challoner and Ian Carr.
Though a regionalist inspired by the landscape of his birth, Horn is very much a European and his work is influenced by writers such as Hölderlin and Prévért.
His poetry has been extensively published in magazines/anthologies in the U.K., The Netherlands and Canada. He has read on T.V. and Radio. He was commissioned by BBC Radio Five Live to write a poem for Rogan Taylor's 'The Death of Football' series.
He recently worked with the Sunderland Goalkeeper for Danish T.V. on his sequence 'The Saves of Sorensen'. He is also the Editor of 'Verses United', The Poetry of Football'. He was Writer-in- Residence for EURO '96 in Liverpool.
A troubadour of the 'beautiful game' and a commitment to reaching a young audience he has worked in over 60 Schools and Colleges .

Among the more unusual venues he has performed in they include; a performance inside a grotto at Marsden Cliffs, Tyne& Wear. And at the Dutch Foreign Office in The Hague.

In 2000 he won 'The Northern Promise Award' form New Writing North/Northern Arts.The award has enabled Ian to compile his first collection of poems for publication.
See www.google.com to learn more about Ian Horn.

IAN HORN - SOME COMMENTS

"Ian's workshop was the best workshop we had done, simply because it was a more active way of doing poetry.There was so much feeling generated"
(Mike Tracy, English Teacher. West Derby Comp. Liverpool)

'There are some excellent poems and I like the grassroots feel of it'.
(Sean O'Brien, poet on Verses United)

"Ian Horn walks down the road of Dead Pan Alley Realism. Along the way he picks over the evidence of an abandoned culture in the Durham Coalfield- dirt and work, football and jazz, pitmatic and art, class and conflict".
(Andy Croft)

'Proof, as if any were needed, that football and poetry are synonymous'.
(Nick Hornby on Verses United)

'For Art, read football'.
(Times Literary Supplement)

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VIEW WITHOUT PREJUDICE

I have not read the Catalan poetry
I have not read the Arab poets
who talk of Almonds and Oranges
like Eskimo's talk of Snow
I have not read George Sand or Robert Graves
I have not read the Tourist Guides.

But, I did gaze at;
the same Olive Grove
the same Citrus Tree
the same Pine Forest
the same Mountain
the same Cala
the same ratio of Land, Sea and Sky
and the scent of a Majorcan summer was with me.

Memory is smell.

© Ian Horn, 2000

ACTING THE GOAT

At the Hotel
We drank Guinness
and claimed to know Jack Charlton.
We discussed De Valera, the Pope, The Easter Rising
and The Eurovision Song Contest before the Riverdance phenomenon.
We drank to peace, 'up the road'.
Then, Keith opened the fourth-floor window
and climbed out.
The concierge searched the Dublin skyline
for dangling feet.
I'd seen it all before-The Exhibitionist.
A Groundhog Day-style time- loop.
I tried to recall how Karl Malden
in The Streets of San Francisco
had talked down suicides
from the Golden Gate Bridge.
I looked across O'Connell Street
- the widest boulevard of Europe.
I shouted, "Last drinks at the bar!"
That did the trick
Pretty damn quick.

© Ian Horn, 2001