Photo by Paul Blakemore
Bio
Stephen was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. In 1996, aged 16, he experienced a life changing accident whilst sledging in the snow and is now paralysed from below the waist. Stephen writes extensively but not exclusively about life as a wheelchair user.
He has spoken at events across the UK and at festivals such as Shambala, Womad, Verve Poetry Festival and Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival. In addition, Stephen has read internationally in San Antonio, Texas.
Stephen writes poetry for children and adults. In March 2019 Stephen’s first poetry collection for adults, Only Air, was published by Burning Eye Books. His second collection The Last Custodian, a dystopian novella in poetry form, was published again by Burning Eye Books in June 2021 and an accompanying six episode podcast of the same name was launched in September 2021.
Stephen is represented by children’s Literary Agent Alice Williams. In 2023 his first children’s poetry collection, the CLiPPA shortlisted And I Climbed, And I Climbed, was published by Troika Books. He is currently writing his first picture book and the follow up poetry collection to And I Climbed, And I Climbed. In addition, he is also working with a creative team to turn And I Climbed, And I Climbed into a stage play for children.
His poems have been anthologised by Verve Poetry Press, Hachette Children’s Group, The Poetry Business and Squares & Rebels.
In August 2021 Stephen performed his first solo show ‘A Life With PIP’ having been commissioned by Coventry based theatre company Theatre Absolute. The show was based on their Humanistan Theme and was about Stephen’s experiences of applying for the PIP benefit.
He can be found on most social media channels via @spokeandpencil and is available to present talks and workshops on a range of issues including accessibility, disability poetry and how poets write about the relationship with their body.
Additionally, he is a 2019, 2020 and 2021 Fellow of the literary organisation Zoeglossia.
In 2022 Stephen qualified as a yoga teacher and he teaches yoga that is suitable for every body type, without judgement. Stephen specialises in yoga for helping you discover new things about your body and reconnecting with other parts you may have forgotten. So, if you decide to practice yoga with Stephen he’ll guide you through a calming practice which works for you, while leaving you empowered by what your body is capable of.
In 2022 and 2023, Stephen represented England at the ISA World Para Surf Championships at Pismo Beach and Huntington Beach in California.
Praise for Only Air
Thanks to Stephen Lightbown's first book of poems we get to see through the eyes of a wheelchair user. Where a beach can be "a war, a match raging between ears", where "seats can applaud" in football stadiums, where your own wheelchair can be a person waiting for you to wake up. Almost anything in Stephen’s poems have the potential to walk. These are straight-talking autobiographical poems which are traumatic, celebratory, humorous and always more than one thing. That is what I know about living with a disability, we have to write our narratives, because the ones written about us, the ones that reduce us to benefit scroungers or pitiful charity cases speak against our complex humanity and Stephen with every poem he writes, gives us an honest glimpse into his.
Raymond Antrobus
Praise for The Last Custodian
A compelling and formally inventive collection of poems that is also a sweeping story, Stephen Lightbown’s The Last Custodian chronicles crisis, and questions our ideas of memory, survival. When towns become ‘laden crematoriums’, when tragedy takes everything, at that last moment, last stand: there is still a music. ‘I have to hear a sound,’ writes the poet, ‘even if it’s played / to photographs’. Coming, as it does, in this moment of global pandemic, The Last Custodian will touch many a reader with its unrelenting, questioning, echoing voice. A moving, inimitable book.
Ilya Kaminsky