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Peter Mortimer - poet, playwright, journalist, publisher - has lived in the North East for thirty years, and many of his books and plays have been published and performed here. He is used to writing about difficult places: against Foreign Office advice he wandered round Yemen; he set up a children's theatre group in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and, over one summer, walked the length of Britain with one dog and no money, dependent on the kindness of strangers to provide accommodation and food.
His books include: The Last of the Hunters: Life with the Fishermen in North Shields; I Married the Angel of the North (poetry); Off the Wall: the Journey of a Play; and Cool for Qat, which grew out of his commission to write a play about the 1930 Yemeni seamen's riot in South Shields; and Camp Shatila - a Writer's Chronicle, which grew from the two months towards the end of 2008, when he lived in Shatila Refugee Camp, Beirut.
In his latest book, part memoir, part documentary and social commentary, he undertook a shorter journey, taking up residence in the same street he grew up in, on the Sherwood council estate in Nottingham. It was a journey of only 160 miles, but one which involved revisiting his previous Nottingham life, some fifty years back. His sojourn makes for an unpredictable, often comic, sometimes painful journey.
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Photograph © Dylan Mortimer 2011; used with permission.
Website designed and maintained for Peter Mortimer by Cornwell Internet
Last update: 27th October 2012