Appearing:
Middlesbrough (10th), North Tyneside (11th), Redcar (12th), Newcastle (13th)
Author Website
Nick's MySpace page
Publisher
Macmillan
Best-selling author, Nick Toczek, is a full-time professional writer and performer who currently works variously as a poet, magician, storyteller, puppeteer, novelist, stand-up comic, radio DJ, political researcher, creative writing tutor, journalist, librettist, advertising copy-writer, and political speech-writer. He’s published over thirty books and has made about 35,000 public appearances. His poetry books alone have sold well over quarter of a million copies.
As a writer in schools, he’s worked with pupils from around 4,500 schools. He also performs at festivals and family events, in libraries and prisons, on radio and TV, in colleges and residential homes, in pubs, clubs and community centres.
In recent years, he’s been a visiting writer at a school in Beijing; has toured Indonesia (Borneo, Sumatra, Bali and Java) working in schools and the community; has had a pantomime and a musical published; presents a own weekly show on local radio; had a poem featured in an award-winning TV advert; was the featured writer in a BAFTA-nominated programme for schools; and – after a decade of writing primarily for children - has resumed writing and performing for adults. He’s been employed as a contributing consultant on the BBC’s Digital Curriculum for schools, and is one half of the multi-media performance duo, Two Shaven Heads (with singer-songwriter-musician Imani Hekima). He’s just finished a children’s novel and is working on his first travel book.
He regularly tours presenting two one-man shows. For families there’s Nick Toczek’s Million-Miles-An-Hour Show, a blend of his magic, poems, stories, puppets and comedy, with plenty of audience interaction and participation. For adults there’s An Evening With Nick Toczek in which he presents a mixture of performance poetry, true stories, satire, magic and comedy. In addition, he regularly works as a close-up magician, particularly in restaurants and bars. He’s also recently been doing puppetry for adults as well as resuming occasional stand-up comedy gigs after a break of several years.
In ’98, The Dragons Cantata, composer Malcolm Singer’s setting of some of Nick’s dragon poems, was performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall with a full symphony orchestra and an 800-strong combined schools choir. Perfect Pitch, their football cantata was premiered at The London Barbican in Jan. ’04. And, in December ’05, Golden Apple published Dragons! The Musical, a play-script by Nick set around songs from the cantata.
Nick, who’s a non-smoking vegetarian, is married with two teenage children, lives in Bradford and buys far too much on ebay.
Recommended Reads
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Read Me Out Loud Macmillan Children's Books 978-0330446211 "Read Me Out Loud" contains a poem for every day of the year from the very best modern and classic poets. There are raps, performance poems, chants, playground rhymes, action verses, poems to join in with, choral poems, poems from different cultures, monologues, dialogues, poems for a series of voices, songs, playlets, loud poems and quiet poems, poems with sound effects and poems with actions you can read them any way you want as long as it is Out Loud! This work includes poems from James Carter, Lewis Carroll, Charles Causely, Paul Cookson, David Harmer, Roger McGough, Gareth Owen, Roger Stevens, Nick Toczek, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Kit Wright and many, many more. |
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The Dog Ate My Bus Pass Macmillan 978-0330418003 The Dog Ate My Bus Pass is a brilliant collection of hilarious poems featuring some of the world's most incredible excuses, apologies, tall stories and fibs. It is essential reading for all children (and some adults too!). from The Worst Excuses in the World, number 5 by Clare Bevan; I'd only left it for two minutes while I built a scale model; of Buckingham Palace out of cheese triangles, when a whole; herd of angry wildebeest stampeded through our back garden, battered down the kitchen door, and before they vanished; into the shimmering sunset, they trampled my book under; their mighty, thundering hooves, and the dog ate it. |
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Kick It! Macmillan 978-0330399203 "Kick It!" is a fantastic collection of energetic football poems from master-rhymer to Nick Toczek, exploring every area of our favourite game. From A Football Is the Ball for Me Though netball's cool and baseball's slick, there's only one ball game they just can't lick. I want a ball, a ball, a ball can you kick. There's just one game with which I click - football, through thin and thick; football wins my voting tick; football, or my name's not Nick. |
FAN
I'm a football fan but I must admit
That I sometimes act like a brainless git
Like a larger lout or a loud half-wit
Or a totally typical drunken Brit.
But I'm genuine, not a counterfeit.
And I might just lark about a bit
And shove and shout and refuse to sit
But football fans are proud of it.
We wear the legitimate scarf and kit.
It's a bright outfit, so it's no secret.
We're football fans for definite.
We're a rowdy crowd but we're proud of it.
It's a game of guile an grace and grit,
A spirited sport for the physically fit.
With my season ticket in my mitt,
I'm a football fan and I'm proud of it.
With literally little that's not been writ,
I can only add that I'll never quit.
I'm a football fan, not a hypocrite,
A football fan and I'm proud of it.
© Nick Toczek 2000