Clive Fencott


Clive Fencott is a writer and sound poet, a performer associated with the British Poetry Revival, and an academic.
Fencott was born in Lydney and began writing poetry in the mid-sixties while studying at art college. In 1974 he attended experimental poetry workshops at the Poetry Society organised by Bob Cobbing. From this he developed an interest in improvised vocal performance and went on to perform around Britain, Europe and the USA, particularly at sound poetry festivals. He later worked with Bob Cobbing, and also with cris cheek and Lawrence Upton in the performance group JGJGJG, of which he was a founder member.
In the 1970s and 1980s his work was published by small press companies such as: Writers Forum, Pirate Press, Underwich Editions and Bluff Books; and magazines Rawz, Poetry Information, words worth, and Pod. In the early 1990s he began an association with Bill Griffiths, producing two co-written pieces for performance: The Dinosaur Park and Variations on the Life of Cuthbert. Since then his writing has concerned extended poetic prose pieces.
In 1987 he moved to the North East of England to take up an academic post at Teesside Polytechnic, where he has remained as a lecturer and a researcher in digital media and video game theory in the School of Computing. He received a PhD in virtual reality theory in 2003 and has over forty academic publications to his name.

Poetry and prose