Thank you to all who fed their words, wishes and ears to this piece.

Music from Dan Graves

Artwork by Michelle Tylicki 

 “This poetry is activism with heart and the heart is the centre of this beautiful book” (Salena Godden)

  “From lost loves buried in urban marshlands to the revolutionary force of Spring, Peter Bearder delivers   some sharp, witty and honest observations. Plus a comprehensive list of absolutely everything that    happened at Glastonbury 2015.” (Mark Gwynn Jones)

“There is such a hard-won elegance to Bearder’s poetry. In the depths of unrequited affection, of the      ennui of a nondescript day, he finds a way of bringing experience to new life through linguistic    innovation, finding the joy in the everyday, the lyrical beauty in a shared joint, a turning away from      status updates and a folded, private life of the mind. He looks outwards, defiantly and assuredly. Line by   line, poem by poem, it delivers.” (Luke Kennard)

AVAILABLE TO BUY on Burning Eye Website

Numbered Boxes is a journey through the stanzas of school days, family, work addiction, heartbreak and back into school as a teacher. Much of the book was written while Pete was a full time spoken word educator, in a world first pilot project in a secondary school in East London. The book opens the lid on containers built by institutions and those harder to unpack, the ones built by ourselves. The final section of the book breaks free from the shadows of these confines and escapes into the debauchery of mid-summer, drawing on a body of work written while Pete was Glastonbury poet in residence, 2015. Numbered Boxes channels with energy and wit of his stage performance, into a body of lyric, narrative and comically surreal poetry, crafted to deliver on the page.