Better known as co-writer of award-winning TV shows and films The Royle Family, The Mrs Merton Show, The Parole Officer, Coogan's Run and Paul Calf, and producer of, amongst many others, Oscar-nominated Philomena, Gavin and Stacey, Moone Boy, Uncle and Alan Partridge, Henry Normal started his writing career as a poet.
Born in Nottingham, Henry's writing career blossomed during his time in Manchester. He set up the Manchester Poetry Festival in the nineties, which continues to this day having widened to become the Manchester Literature Festival. In 2016 he set up the Nottingham Poetry Festival, now an annual event.

Travelling Second Class Through Hope contains seventy poems personally selected by the author from his early works.

Includes a Foreword by Lemn Sissay MBE.

Guardian Review 13 May 2017: The Saturday Poem

"Dovetails bittersweet poetry with a sublimely observant wit" - The Guardian

"The Alan Bennett of Poetry" - The Scotsman

"The nerd triumphant" - Manchester Evening News

"A gentle giant of stand-up poetry" - List

"In amongst his work lie some of the most tender, compassionate and moving pieces I have read from a modern poet" - Artful Reporter

"The enfant terrible of alternative poetry" - Leeds Other Paper

"Witty and uncannily accurate with his observations" - The Stage

"Distinctly funny" - Time Out

Cover photo courtesy of the author, design by Brink.

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