Matt Harvey

Matt was born in Cheshire and grew up in Ireland, Scotland and Twickenham. He left school in 1980 and went straight into unemployment before moving to Devon in 1983 where he lived and later worked in a psychotherapeutic residential community for far too many years. He also worked in a second-hand bookshop, sold handmade shoes, delivered organic vegetables and taught IT in adult education – and poetry.

He began performing poems in 1992 and went full-time ten years later. Since then he’s written many books for adults and children, several song cycles, a musical, been on the radio a lot, written poems for the Guardian Work Section and cheeky columns in Kindred Spirit and Resurgence magazines, and done a shedload of residencies and commissions.

His material led to many bookings at mental health conferences where he would claim to be proof that “you can take the man out of the psychotherapeutic residential community but you can’t take the psychotherapeutic residential community out of the man”.