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LUKE WRIGHT

With his sights set on the Laureateship, Luke Wright, 25, is an angry young poet with ambition to spare.

"I think it's preposterous that if we're going to have a national poet then it's one who's such a turn-off to the average punter," Luke Wright claims. "No disrespect to Andrew Motion but I don't think he is the right 'voice of the nation'. It would be better if it was an elected role. Poetry is such a marginalised genre, yet people's lives would be enriched by it. The Poet Laureate doesn't really promote that."

Just a few years after Luke performed his first poetry in his native Colchester, the 25-year-old has his sights set on poetry's top job. And while he acknowledges that his 'campaign' was launched with his tongue firmly in his cheek, Luke believes he has a better claim to being the 'voice of the nation' than some of the others to whom that tag has been attached.

"It frustrates me when Lily Allen is called the mouthpiece of her generation," Luke says. "I don't think you can be everybody's voice - especially these days, when everyone has access to more information and is more opinionated. But I do think it's possible to sum up a kind of national mood."

And Luke's poems do capture a contemporary Britain recognisable to most. It's one of suburban shopping centres and wet weekends, populated by people stuck in offices dreaming about reality TV. But whilst the malaise of modern life seems to be Luke's main inspiration, it's also tempered with a very English sarcasm.

"Comedy is a way of sugaring the pill because otherwise you sound horribly hectoring," he asserts. "Not everything I write is funny, but I do enjoy the craft of making people laugh. It doesn't have to be a joke either - with poems the way you arrange the cadence or how it scans can be funny."

Indeed, Luke has honed his skills on the stand-up comedy circuit as well as poetry readings. Although he says he prefers not to do that now - "it basically restricts you to the poems you know will make people laugh" - he does believe that live gigs are essential for getting poetry across to a wider audience. Something he also attempts to do by curating the poetry tent at the Latitude music festival every year.

Her third production will be a new video for her brother's band, Bim, while she continues to seek out work in the industry at large.

Originally inspired by 'punk poets' like John Cooper Clarke, the truth is Luke is probably as close to a pop star as poetry has produced in some time. He recently toured with the Aisle16 poetry collective as the 'Poetry Boyband' and has been profiled in Sunday broadsheets, while his forthcoming first book Who Writes This Crap?, co-written with Joel Stickley - plus of course his 4Talent Award - are hardly going to deflate his burgeoning profile.

With an irony so sweet it could be one of his couplets, not only is Luke now accepting a prize from an organisation he once ridiculed in his poem Channel 4, but he also reveals that the theme of his current work is the hollow nature of fame.

"It would be churlish of me not to accept because I don't like some of their TV," he admits. "Channel 4 always want to be clever and ironic so I'm sure they take it on the chin anyway. I'm fascinated by what drives people for 'fame' though. I want to be well-respected in my field but I don't understand why anyone would want to be a 'celebrity.'"

CONTACTS

www.lukewright.co.uk
luke@lukewright.com

Judge: Cath Lovesey, editor, T4, Youth & Music
Text: Paul Clarke
Photography: Adam Mattison-Ward

Luke was one of 20 4Talent Award winners in 2007, our hotly tipped young creatives to watch, to hire and to collaborate with. To meet the other 19 click here