About Tom
Tom was born and raised on the Suffolk-Norfolk border in East Anglia, but lived in Scotland for almost twenty years before gravitating to Dartmoor in the Southwest of England. Tom has been storytelling publicly for over 15 years and writing for much longer. He now teaches storytelling for Hedgespoken and has been known to mentor a writer or two. Tom is also occasionally still a craftsman, having been a leatherworker since 1999, and is sometimes still an acupunk, or community acupuncturist.
In 2015, he co-launched Hedgespoken travelling storytelling theatre and Hedgespoken Press and these are often his main focus, elliptical approaches to changing the world, blessed with plenty of Trickster and a good helping of unfathomable magic.
Essentially a cheerful fellow driven to apoplexy and grief by the madness of our times, Tom is calmed most effectively by walking on Dartmoor, by sleeping in the deep greenwood and by the sound of true words spoken.
Tom’s work has appeared all over the place. Sometimes a Wild God is fast becoming a subcultural passport or token of recognition, passing from hand to hand and mouth to ear all about the world. Long may it sing.
He is currently working on three new collections of poetry, two of which should be coming out in 2022 - The Queen of Heaven and Three-Legged Crow. He currently lives just south of Dartmoor and is the father of two young and feral sons.
Tom hopes his work provokes you into a deeper relationship with this marvellous world, or sings a remembering song to you, or inspires some kind of cathartic fit that takes you home via the stars… There's much to lament and grieve, and much to be angry about and take action against, but to be alive is an incredible thing. We do not know when death or disaster will take us, so let us live fully while we may and nourish the web of life around us as much as we possibly can.
I have heard all the terrible news and I have looked into the inferno of the future, but I am still in love with this life.
(Photo taken in the early summer of 2022 to illustrate this instagram post about skin, tattooing and body image. It's also on facebook here.)