SPOKE presents James McDermott: Father Myself

+ Q & A with Professor Steve Waters

In January 2022, local writer and UEA lecturer James McDermott lost his sixty year old father to COVID after three weeks in intensive care. His father had refused the COVID vaccines.

In ‘Father Myself’, his second collection of poetry from Nine Arches Press, McDermott explores his father’s complex life, illness and death; the pandemic; grief; growth; and how as a queer boy then a bereaved son, he had to learn to father himself.

In this event, James will read poems from ‘Father Myself’ and be in conversation about the collection with writer and fellow UEA lecturer Steve Waters.

This will be followed by an audience Q&A then a book signing.

“Gut-punching. McDermott’s best work to date” Luke Wright

“Father Myself is a bright devastation of a book: a meditation on father-son love, queerness, loss, imperfection, and a man slowly becoming his own father. Lyrical, haunting and exquisitely rendered” Joelle Taylor

“A brave and self-exposing collection of poems that’s a moving homage to a parent that died too soon and to the love and complexities of a father-son relationship. The book is an incredible testament to the pandemic, one where boy becomes man, and where loss brings catharsis and resurrection, but also enables a celebration and affirmation of the queer self. An intelligent, compelling and heartbreaking collection that’s an elegy to COVID and to everything that through all the years could never be said” Paul Stephenson

James McDermott

James McDermott’s poetry collections include ‘Wild Life’ (Nine Arches Press; shortlisted for an East Anglian Book Award 2023), ‘Erased’ (Polari Press) and ‘Manatomy’ (Burning Eye; longlisted for Polari’s First Book Prize 2021). Plays published by Samuel French include ‘Jab’ (Park Theatre/Finborough Theatre; nominated for an Off West End Theatre Award for Best New Play 2024), ‘Time and Tide’ (Park Theatre/Tour; nominated for an Off West End Theatre Award for Best New Play 2020) and ‘Rubber Ring’ (Pleasance Islington/Tour). Local plays include ‘Shanty’ (Sheringham Little Theatre), ‘The Birds and The Bees’ (New Wolsey/Tour), ‘Robin Good: The Politico-Panto’ (Norwich Playhouse) and ‘CAMP!’ (Norwich Arts Centre). James is one of the writers on ‘EastEnders’ and has written multiple episodes. He is an Arvon writing tutor and lectures in creative writing at The University Of East Anglia.