Brighton Ventriloquies

Tony Spiers was born in Southgate, London during a flying bomb raid. After a stint as a boy, he was employed to rummage through plankton in the jellyfish department at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. He is now a botanist, having moved to the saltier, chalkier hills of Brighton. You have, most likely, spotted him on the cliff-tops at Roedean, fighting off hungry goldfinches, as he pockets seeds of the slender thistle for the Millenium Seed Bank. He began writing and performing in the early 1980's and has been winner and runner-up at flash fiction slams at Komedia. His last show was a version of Hitchcock's 'The Lady Vanishes" with Enid Blyton and the 'Famous Five', performed by sock puppets. This is his first poetry collection.

• West Pier, Mister Punch, Ice Cream, Max Miller, Herring Gull, Martha Gunn, Sea, Magnus Volk, Salt, Flower Girl, Flotsam, Phoebe Hessel, Silver Darlings, William Moon, Preston Twins, Tree Maids, Sir Roland Hill, Flint, Prince Regent, Lugworms, Mtshele, Sheep, Sake Dean Mahomet, Wellesbourne, Edward Thomas Booth, Funeral for Mrs Reynolds.

'Tony Spiers's confident, irreverant, exuberant poems are full of music and sound effects, pun and innuendo, celebrations of lives lived outside the normal rules of engagement, and sly digs at authority - in the voices of some of Brighton's most famous and infamous characters. As refreshing and enjoyable as a walk along the pier on a breezy day, eating salty chips.' - Catherine Smith.