Andy Willoughby (UK)

Andy Willoughby is a poet and playwright who lives in Durham in the North East of the UK, and has developed deep links with Estonia over the years, first visiting in 2009, five years after meeting Kristiina Ehin in Siberia at a Finno-Ugric literary conference, which he was invited to by Finnish poets. Andy has a long history of performing and working on exchange/translation projects with Finnish poets, after first performing in Finland in 2000 at the DBTL festival in Turku. This led to him touring in 2011 with Finnish, English and Estonian writers, and musicians from the UK, Finland, Karelia and Estonia – including Santa Karhu and Aapo Ilves – which led to a legendary final performance in the Paper Museum at Crazy Tartu in October of that year when he says he fell in love with the city with it’s poets, singers and the Mother River and the Devil’s and Angel’s bridges on Toome Hill. He has since performed at Prima Vista and Crazy Tartu on many occasions, was a very proactive UNESCO Writer in Residence in Tartu in 2019, giving many readings and workshops, including some in Tallinn. He has been Poet Laureate of his hometown, Middlesbrough, a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, a Slam Poetry Coach with Apples and Snakes and still works with poetry in educational and social settings, specialising in working with hard-to-reach groups. His books include “Tough”, “Sampo: Heading Further North” (w. Bob Beagrie) and “Between Stations”, which was translated into Estonian and Finnish by Kersti Unt and Kalle Niinikangas and was republished in hardback form in 2024 by Enostone in Helsinki. He often works collaboratively with multimedia artists and musicians.