Adam Strickson

My freelance career as a writer began with the multi-lingual play, Rajpathe Badsha Lear (King Lear on the Street) for Twisting Yarn and Chol Theatre in 1999. I haven't looked back, especially since the launch of my first poetry collection, An Indian Rug Surprised by Snow, in 2005. I give many poetry performances, often accompanied by South Asian music, contemporary jazz or British folk.

My BA is in theatre, my MA in poetry and my PhD investigated the librettist-composer relationship in collaboration with Opera North. After working with Horse and Bamboo Theatre, I co-founded Chol Theatre, taking intercultural work from Batley to the fishing villages of Chittagong in Bangladesh, before leaving in 2002 to concentrate on a freelance career. In 2010, I founded Wingbeats, an opera and music-theatre company for Cultural Olympiad in Yorkshire, which continues to produce work.

I am a part-time Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds, where I lead courses on the popular MA in Writing for Performance and Publication.

Brought up in the North Cotswolds on the edge of Shakespeare country, I am now happily resident in a Victorian house with a wonderful wildlife garden on the steep slopes of the Colne Valley, West Yorkshire. When not writing or making things, I practise Iyengar Yoga, work voluntarily with refugee organisations, enjoy the company of my four generation family and potter about in the bird reserves and moors of Yorkshire.