Additional information
by John McCullough (Author)
John McCullough's Crowd Voltage addresses yearnings for community. It probes fragmentation within groups and individuals - disturbances within the body of the crowd and the crowd of the body. Engaging with working-class and queer experiences, the poems move between solitude and togetherness, haunted by ghosts from history as they dream of unity and discover joy in deserted corners. To be common here is to share not only qualities but stories with many others - to be classed alongside people with similar origins and become connected also to what is commonplace in the world of animals and plants, days and tables. Sky and sea dominate as the speakers search for oneness and completion, confronted by vast silences and the shadow of Brighton's collapsing West Pier.
John McCullough has published four previous collections; most recently, the Costa-shortlisted Reckless Paper Birds (2019), winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and Panic Response (2022), which included his long poem 'Flowers of Sulphur', shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. His first collection of poems The Frost Fairs (Salt, 2011) won the Polari First Book Prize.
Author Biography
John McCullough lives in Hove, England. His first collection of poems, The Frost Fairs, was published by Salt in 2011 and won the Polari First Book Prize. It was a Book of the Year in The Independent as well as a summer read in The Observer. His fourth collection, Panic Response (Penned in the Margins, 2022), was a Book of the Year for The Telegraph and one of The Times' Notable New Poetry Books of 2022. The collection's long poem, 'Flower of Sulphur', was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. His fifth, Crowd Voltage, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2026. John is a Senior Lecturer in creative writing at the University of Brighton as well as teaching on poetry for organisations including the Arvon Foundation and the online Creative Writing Programme.
