Contact me directly: dch.derekhealy@gmail.com
I have read on five occasions at the Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival as part of the annual Gloucestershire Writers’ Network poetry competition. I have also read on a number of occasions at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, most recently in May 2025, when I appeared alongside Oxford Professor of Theoretical Physics Joseph Conlon at an event entitled “Origins and the Poetry of Science”. The Ken Healy STEM Fund, a charity set up in memory of my late brother, was headline sponsor for the festival that year, and will be sponsoring the event again for 2026.
In July 2023 I read alongside fellow Malvern poet Kim Taplin at the Malvern Book Co-op. This event launched Kim's latest collection Ebb & Flow (Graffiti Books, 2023). I read poems from my Uncharted collection, and all proceeds from sale of our books were donated to the Malvern Book Co-op's Outreach charity, supporting disadvantaged members of our community with books and literacy skills.
With local writer and musician Nick John I formed the literary duo Writers Block, and we jointly presented a number of café and bookshop performances, including many appearances at the Peppers Arts café in central Gloucester.
Reading one's work to supportively critical groups is important to all of us in our artistic development. For ten years I have been a member of the Cirencester based Catchword writing group, which comprises poets, novelists, short story writers and memoirists.
Since moving to Malvern in 2019, I have become a member of the Spoken Word poetry group here, which meets regularly at the Great Malvern Hotel. We have organized several poetry poster displays and accompanying readings over the past three years, in conjunction with Malvern Writers’ Circle and the Malvern Book Co-op.
In summer of 2025 I read at the Violet Bookshop in Upton upon Severn, along with several Malvern poet colleagues, as part of the Upton Folk Festival, an event successfully repeated in May of this year (2026).
On 23rd February 2026 I launched my new, and fourth, collection Children in the Window, at the Malvern Book Co-op. This was an open mic event, sponsored by Graffiti Books and hosted by the Book Co-op as its last ever live event. Proceeds from the sale of my book were donated in full to the Book Co-op's Community Literacy Project.
On Saturday 11th April this year (2026) I was privileged, once again, to read at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. I read a selection of pieces from my latest collection Children in the Window, alongside poet William Wootten. Later that same month I read another selection at the regular Poets at Cheltenham Library event, hosted by Annie Ellis.