Colleges, Schools, Community Groups, & Prisons
Performing to a youth club
Universities
He has read to many university poetry societies, including Oxford, University College London, King’s College London, L.S.E., Bath, Bournemouth, East Anglia, Exeter, Lancaster, Loughborough, Warwick, University of Wales Aberystwyth, University of Wales Bangor, University of Wales Lampeter, and the Cambridge University Shirley Society.
Schools
He is much in demand to perform his poetry in schools, where he presents programmes tailored to the schools’ individual requirements.
He regularly appears as part of a Sixth-form General Studies programme where his poetry entertainments are much appreciated even by people for whom poetry is normally something to avoid at all costs!
Another regular commitment is to perform for Key Stages 3 and 4.
He has given hundreds of performances to both these kinds of audience.
Particularly with KS 3 and 4 pupils, he is often invited to give follow-up workshops in creative writing.
He has also given lectures to specialist English classes.
In addition he has often performed in public libraries, to youth clubs, and to pensioners.
He has also performed in prisons, mostly to the inmates, but, on occasions, even to the warders.
The Warden, Radley College
You showed the students vividly – what few of them had little conception of before – the power and delight that poetry can have.
Thanet Technical College
I have never experienced such a vigorous, well-managed, rendering of poetry; it was splendidly varied and pitched exactly right for our audience.
Malvern Girls’ College
I learnt a lot about poetry in your short visit, and I’m sure that no one will easily forget the occasion.
The Rector, Edinburgh Academy
We all enjoyed it tremendously and appreciated the hard work that goes into the mastery of such skills – poetic and dramatic – that you possess.
St Mary’s Convent, Ascot
Such scholarship and humanity. The variety of poems brought before us so many facets of today’s living. What appealed to me most was your depth of understanding and tenderness so beautifully expressed.
Kilgraston School
A memorable performance. Your enthusiasm for literature, poetry, painting, shone through, as did your scholarship.
Framlingham College
You have succeeded where others have failed. The girls refer to your work daily.
Rickmansworth Masonic School
After seeing your performance I went home and wrote out seven first drafts for seven different poems and sketched the outlines of the next great novel of the century.
A student at University of Wales, Aberystwyth
I really enjoyed it. Can we leave Eliot today and talk about Leo Aylen’s poetry?
Frome College (Comprehensive)
Your performances were much appreciated.
Highpoint Prison
Until I heard Leo, I imagined poets as upper class people who were boring to hear and a complete waste of time. But Leo was great at putting his thoughts across to you clear and understandable.
A motor mechanic in Bolton