Description
Matt Abbott was volunteering at the Calais Jungle refugee camp when his native Wakefield voted 66% Leave. Why did so many working-class communities like his support Brexit so strongly? How can the UK ignore a humanitarian crisis just 22 miles from Dover? And does anything ever actually change for people like Maria?
Matt’s one man poetry show, Two Little Ducks, is a powerful, personal and political spoken word show from one of UK poetry’s rising stars. He channels the human side of politics to look at national identity, preconceptions, class and anti-establishment anger. Poetic flair and storytelling, with a unique insight into the summer that changed everything.
To accompany the show, Verve Poetry Press has produced a book containing the full and final version of Two Little Ducks, along with a selection of the stand-alone poems Matt composed during the time of writing his show. Together they form a collection that gives a full and inspiring taste of this poet’s pin-point way with words and great concern for common people – their complexity, their great unpredictability.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Abbot is a poet, educator and activist from Wakefield. His debut one-man stage show Two Little Ducks explored the working-class Leave vote, volunteering at the Calais Jungle and life in Northern tumbleweed towns. It earned a hat-trick of 5* and 4* reviews during a full Edinburgh Fringe run in 2017 and during a 22-date UK theatre tour in 2018. The show’s content was published as his debut poetry collection by Verve Poetry Press in 2018. His debut kids’ poetry collection A Hurricane in my Head was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. It was one of National Poetry Day’s selected titles, which led to a live appearance on Blue Peter. He was also named as one of five of the UK’s leading “new poets” in The Guardian earlier in 2019.
Find out more on Matt’s Website.
