Leo Aylen poet, actor, director, and screenwriter

Leo has been the sole subject of 3 American nationwide TV programs (CBS), and has performed his poetry shows all over Britain and America, as well as in Africa.

Leo has published 8 poetry collections, (most recent for children Rhymoceros). He has been an Arvon (2ce), Peterloo (2ce), & Bridport, prizewinner. Over 100 of his poems broadcast on radio and TV in Britain, Europe, America, and Africa.

Leo's poetry has also been published in The Sun Dancing, Tunes on a Tin Whistle, 100 Favourite Animal Poems, 100 Major Modern Poets, The Methuen Book of Theatre Verse, What makes your Toenails Twinkle, Toughie Toffee, Nothing tastes quite like a Gerbil, and about 120 other anthologies, many of them for children and teenagers.

Leo has made films, and co-wrote Gods and Generals, (Warner Bros 2003).

Leo has performed his poetry in over a thousand schools, colleges, to every age group from infants to sixth-formers and university students; as well as in festivals, theatres, churches, prisons, night clubs, the Royal Albert Hall, St Paul's Cathedral, and to 3000 Zulus on an open-air hillside!

• Leo is available for a poetry performance, followed by workshop(s).
• Any age-group acceptable.
• His shows are one-person theatre, and so best done to a large audience.

Responses to Leo's visits to schools:

L aughter, amusement

E xcitement, anticipation

O n to poetry about

A nimals with

Y ellow tummies

L ong lurking leeches mixed with

E ggs, ostrich variety.

N ow it's our turn to write!

Pamela Bradley, age 9

'Such scholarship and humanity. The variety of poems brought before us so many facets of today's living. What appealed to me most was your depth of understanding and tenderness so beautifully expressed.'

Kilgraston School

'You have succeeded where others have failed. The girls refer to your work daily.'

Rickmansworth School

'You showed the students vividly - what few of them had little conception of before - the power and delight that poetry can have.'

Thanet Technical College

'I really enjoyed it. Can we leave Eliot today and talk about Leo Aylen's poetry?'

A 14-year-old at Frome College (Comprehensive)

'I recommend his poems because they are funny and active for old and young people. He did brilliant actions.'

Tom Ireson and other eight-year-olds, Queen Anne First School

Other Responses to Leo:

'Until I heard Leo, I imagined poets as upper class people who were boring to hear and a complete waste of time. But Leo was great at putting his thoughts across to you clear and understandable.'

A motor mechanic in Bolton

'Your performances were much appreciated.'

Highpoint Prison Zany.

'Joyous.'

Steve Ellis, TIMES LIT. SUPP

'Leo Aylen's work has vitality, technical agility, considerable subtlety and range. If poetry should be a living organism, demonstrably of the here and now, this is it.'

Charles Causley

'There is nothing safe and conventional about his writing. Vigour, enjoyment of playing with the fire of words and images, and an exuberant appetite for rhythms and sounds … '

Alan Brownjohn

' In an unusual event, poet Leo Aylen took us spiralling downwards to a brush with death. His poem is taut, alert, deliberate. His non-stop delivery is a tour de force. It is strong, sharp, rhythmic, mainly fast, and punched out hard; his verbal gymnastics - the leaping changes of accents, the sung interjections from Beethoven's Ninth or the Hallelujah Chorus - are incredible.'

Ann Nugent, THE STAGE

'An entire TV programme devoted to poet Leo Aylen was still not enough for me.'

Val Pauquet, THE STAR

'Technically brilliant, exuberantly sincere, marvellously entertaining.'

Anthony Burgess