Canal Laureate Roy McFarlane

The canal laureate, Roy McFarlane FRSL, kindly agreed to be our headline poet and to judge the inaugural Oxford Canal Festival poetry competition (with both children and adult categories).

We were delighted to host canal laureate, Roy McFarlane. He was born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage and has spent most of his years living in Wolverhampton. He has held the roles of Birmingham’s Poet Laureate,  Starbucks’ Poet in Residence, and the Birmingham & Midland Institute’s Poet in Residence. Roy’s writing has appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Out of Bounds (Bloodaxe, 2012), Filigree (Peepal Tree,  2018) and he is the editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack, 2011). His first full collection of poems, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was published in 2016, followed by The Healing Next Time in 2018, both published by Nine Arches Press.