Poet, Regular Performer on Radio 4’s On-The-Spot Poetry Slot, the First Official Poet in Residence for the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, Writer for The Guardian, Bestselling Author of ‘Standing Up To Be Counted Out’ & Popular Comedian

Matt Harvey has proved so popular in the on-the-spot poetry slot on Radio 4’s award-winning Saturday Live – for whom he has written and performed well over 100 poems – that he is regularly voted onto the radio station’s ‘Pick of the Week’.

Poet, humorist, and enemy of all that’s difficult and upsetting, Matt Harvey engages audiences with perceptive observation, playing with words, rhymes and rhythms, his themes ranging from the lightweight – a screw, kippers, stolen paperclips – to the more weighty – worry, indolence, love, stolen laptops.

His pace varies from quiet and slow, to modern rap, to startling velocity and tongue twisters.

All Matt’s performances are tailored according to differing audience and client requirements. He invites participation, and will arrange for your delegates to depart with a personalised momento of your event that they have created for themselves.

Matt Harvey blends self-deprecating irony with wit, and seriousness. Whimsical, affectionate, and topical, he is, above all, funny.

Matt’s radio career started with Radio 4’s ‘One Night Stanza’ in 2001, and he has been featured on Pick of the Week at least once every year since then. That’s 13 times!

He has made innumerable radio appearances, including Off the Page, Adventures in Poetry, A Good Read, The Verb, and as guest presenter of Word of Mouth, and has written and presented several documentaries for Radio 4, as well as various short films for BBC’s Inside Out strand.

In 2010 in his role as first official Poet in Residence for the Wimbledon Tennis Championships his work was heard and read in five continents. ‘Brilliant’ – New Yorker.

He writes regularly for The Guardian, and his books include best seller ‘Standing Up To Be Counted Out’, ‘The Hole in the Sum of my Parts’, ‘Where Earwigs Dare’; and ‘Shopping With Dad’ which was translated into various different languages and made into a film by CBBC to be shown around the world. His latest book, just out, is ‘Mindless Body, Spineless Mind.’

Matt Harvey is equally at home at a mental health conference, a literary festival, a prison, or working with inner city school kids, as he is performing to a hall of several thousand business delegates. He is a people-person who enjoys interacting with people of every background.

Matt has appeared alongside poets as diverse as Carol Ann Duffy and Pam Ayres, Simon Armitage and John Cooper Clarke, he’s a regular at the Edinburgh Festival, and his varied commissions range from poem-film for the Science Museum, via Open University’s 40th anniversary poem, to the Energy Ombudsman…

Matt is also in demand as a lyricist. His ‘Songbook of Unsingable Songs’ produced with composer Stephen Deazley, has received 5 star reviews. His ‘A Little Book of Monsters’ is currently touring music festivals in the UK, sung by massed primary school choirs.

Most recently ‘The Same Flame’, with Thomas Hewitt Jones, has met with a very warm response and more and more choirs are wanting to sing it – it has been published by Boosey and Hawkes, released on CD by Vivum and is currently being orchestrated for performance at Carnegie Hall in 2013.

Why Hire Matt Harvey?