Peter Mortimer

Riot: revived at the Customs House and touring the UK

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. 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.

That play, RIOT, was revived this summer; after a very successful run at the Customs House in South Shields in mid-June it transfered to Liverpool's Unity Theatre, as part of the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival.

The text of RIOT is published by Five Leaves Press, accompanied by a translation into Arabic; it can be ordered from InPress.

Read more about RIOT.

For five years Peter Mortimer wrote a weekly column for the North Tyneside based News Guardian series of papers; Mortimer at Large, a collection of those columns, is published by IRON Press / North Tyneside Libraries.