Beginning With Your Last Breath

Roy McFarlane is a Poet, Writer and former Youth & Community Worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage, spending most of his years in Wolverhampton and the Black Country and now living in Brighton. Roy is the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and National Canal Laureate and is the co-editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack). He has three collections published by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath and The Healing Next Time (shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize). Roy is also currently touring with Take Flight a performance collaboration of words, jazz, gospel and blues which is heavily influenced by his third collection, Living by Troubled Waters (Nine Arches Press 2022). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a Doctor of Letters by the University of Wolverhampton. Roy continues to perform nationally, sharing his passion for social justice, equality, identity, love and the healing power of poetry as a witness to our times.