Brendan Cleary

Cleary attended Carrickfergus Grammar School in Northern Ireland. He moved from Northern Ireland in 1977 to Middlesbrough, a large town in north-east England, in order to attend Teesside Polytechnic. He then settled in Newcastle, where he founded Echo Room Press and was also an editor of Stand Magazine. Cleary earned a MA from Sunderland Polytechnic, which later became University of Sunderland in 1992.^[2] For a number of years he ran The Morden Tower Readings.

Cleary has published a number of full collections throughout his career as well as in many magazines and a prodigious number of small press pamphlets. Martin Mooney noted the importance of pamphlets in Cleary's work ‘architecturally’ shaping different voices and blocks of work.^[3] From early in his career much of Cleary's work has been characterised by its conversational tone, one that "seems to aspire to a state of speech that is highly eloquent, almost as if it is a betrayal to have to write down the poem".^[4] His 2006 work, Weightless, was described by Roddy Lumsden as a “modern blues".^[5] A major retrospective of his work, Goin' Down Slow: selected poems 1985-2010, was published by Tall Lighthouse in 2010.

He lived in Brighton with Casper Hutchison Slater in between 4 April 2017 - 29 November 2021

Cleary's full collections include:

• “White Bread & ITV”, Wide Skirt Press (1990)
• “The Irish Card”, Bloodaxe (1993)
• “Sacrilege”, Bloodaxe, (1998)
• “Stranger In The House”, Wrecking Ball Press, (2001)
• “weightless”, tall-lighthouse, (2006)
• “some turbulent weather”, tall-lighthouse, (2008)
• “goin’ down slow”, tall-lighthouse, (2010)
• "Face", Pighog Press, (2013)
• "Do Horses Fly?", tall-lighthouse (2019)
• "The Other Place", Pighog Press/Red Hen Press (2021)

Cleary's pamphlets include:

• “Tears in the Burger Store”, Jackson's Arm, (1985)
• “Expecting Cameras”, Echo Room Press, (1986)
• “Late Night Bouts”, Bad Seed Press, (1986)
• “The Partys Upstairs”, Smith/Doorstop, (1986)
• “Memos to Sensitive Eddie”, Wide Skirt Press, (1987)
• “Newcastle Is Benidorm”, Echo Room Press, (1988)
• “Crack”, Echo Room Press, (1991)
• “Transylvania”, Echo Room Press, (1992)
• “White Logic”, Echo Room Press, (1995)
• “Sad Movies”, Bay Press, (1996)
• “Goin Down Slow”, Echo Room Press, (1997)
• “Jackson”, Pighog, (2004)
• “Fear and Sabotage”, Echo Room Press, (2005)
• “Nick’s Diary”, Echo Room Press, (2005)
• “Dinner with Nick”, Echo Room Press, (2006)
• “Stepping Out”, Echo Room Editions, (2007)
• “Trees on Bear Road”, Sunk Island Publishing, (2008)
• "Love Hotel Poems", Echo Room Press (2014)
• "Ghost Tapes", Echo Room Press (2015)
• "Esme Letters", Echo Room Press (2016)
• "If I'm Lucky", Hybrid Press (2020)
• "The Suicide Run", Hybrid Press (2021)
• "More Ghost Tapes", Hybrid Press (2022)
• "Last Poems?", tall-lighthouse (2023)
• "Country Simple", Echo Room Press (2025)