“The strangely most punk poet” – mü magazine
“A remarkable self-driven creator, working outside the usual-suspect groups, with an enormous investment of time and talent” – Sphinx Review
“A notable range of form and content, but structured with obvious care and definite
intent by a skilled writer” – Professor Paul Quinn, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Chichester
“He is so obviously special” – Sir Tim Smit, founder of Eden Project
I am a poet.
Over the last seven years I have created and hosted poetic happenings to a combined audience of 1,000+. Sold around £5,000 of books and prints privately to India, USA, Canada, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the UK. Built an audience of 5,000 Instagram followers of my work and a mailing list of 1000 addresses. Distributed around another 1,500 books for free globally. This is in accordance with William Blake’s gifting philosophy.
I have performed at Edinburgh Poetry Festival, in English rainforests and countless other venues. Had a retrospective of my first six years’ work held in Field System art gallery in Devon. Been invited by the Bank of England to create a poetic experience in their space.
I regularly receive commissions from major brands and organisations. These include St Martin-in-the-Fields to write a poem for Sir Simon Russell Beale to perform at a Classic FM event, and London Fire Brigade to write a poem which has subsequently been read at firefighter’s funerals and in church sermons. (A line from this is painted above Old Street Fire Station, it is shared on social media daily, most recently by Pedro Pascal, and features in Lena Dunham’s latest Netflix show.)
I’ve also written pieces for Historic Royal Palaces, Global Witness, British Library, English National Ballet and many more.
“Thomas Sharp’s work conjures unique and somehow at once relatable images, universal truth hidden in new ways to see things. It challenges me to think differently, mystically and passionately.”
“The poems have a gothic flavour: brooding, bleak, elaborately detailed, each page like a filigreed wrought-iron gate.”
“Last night was wonderful. I love hearing you read your poetry. I felt like I was sitting in an in-between world and I’m still there today.”
Books
Poetry books. Look, I know they’re the opposite of everything capitalism tells us is good or useful, but do buy more self-published poetry books.
“There are some books about magic and some books that are magickal. As someone who doesn't particularly appreciate being told how to magick – I much prefer the latter, because just by simply reading them, I am changed. I begin to see things differently. New worlds open up. I become re-enchanted.
This summer I discovered such a book.
Language Consciousness Magick Romance is a revolving-door-dream-portal of poems. It’s kaleidoscopic. It shimmers. Psychedelic? Yes. Spellbinding? In all respects. Reading it rearranged my brain and who doesn’t need a good mystic shake-up in their headspace? In short, it’s brilliant.”
Some enormously generous words from occult artist Tiera May.
484 page hardback book with a black cloth, white foil cover.
Six years of collected works plus eight introductory mini-biographical and philosophical essays offering an insight to the poetry.
Poems contained within the volume are The Weeping Cufflinks, myu, Jack and Jill, Twenty-five sculptures in five dimensions, The Supreme Point, Game Six, Naomi's Poem, extracts of Very Special Knowledge, Changeling and The Idyllegy.
The book also contains 86 individual poems including commercial work 'There is a word' and 'The Running Towards', published for the first time.
First printing of ten copies sold out.
Second printing of ten copies sold out.
Third printing of forty copies sold out.
Fourth printing of fifty copies now on sale.
Here are some other things reviewers and buyers of the book have said …
“This confirms Thomas Sharp as one of our most important contemporary poets.”
“I simply cannot express how much I love what you write.”
“A future collectors’ book.”
“Poems that shatter our old ways of seeing and feeling and shoot the soul of the world straight into our veins like it’s the strongest of drugs … that’s what Thomas Sharp’s poems do.”
“So many treasures to contemplate in its pages.”
“It touches somewhere very deep, very old, inside my being. Echoes of someone I’ve been somewhere.”
“Sexiest looking book I own and I own a lot of books.”
“Thomas Sharp is a brain and a spirit like no other.”
“I cannot recommend highly enough that you jump into some poetic adventures with him. It will change you. The new book is a collection of his work from the last six years, along with shimmering stories of how the poems came to be.”
“An extraordinary gift with words and a pure commitment to making his art happen, in a world that doesn’t make it easy.”
A Symbolist collection. 40 pages. Hardback. Black ribbon marker. The first printing was of 75, with 25 in Amethyst, 25 in Kingfisher and 25 in Forest cloth covers.
The second printing is of 100 in a Starfish cover.
Readers say …
“Thank you so much for keeping language alive. If there is a magical world behind the ragged curtain, I’m sure its inhabitants shine bright every time you release new poetry, I know I do. “
“I love your poetry … the experience is enriching, thought provoking and stimulating. The poems that I don’t quite get leave me full of wonder - and I love wondering.”
“Not so much reading, maybe inhaling. The poems seem to live in the cracks between waking and dreaming.”
“Permanently roaming the desolate moors of love-in-death, love-in-terror, love-in-decay, without ever having recourse to the warming hearth. It was a cold afternoon anyway but I needed extra blankets. It reminded me of the Eve of St Agnes - the bone freezing cold of that poem and the way the human heart makes its presence felt not through the heat it transmits, but through the clammy aftermath of the condensation it leaves in its wake.”
“Thank you for the beautiful book, for your creativity and generosity.”
“I read this elegiac collection as a lack of agency. Never actually having, only ever having had. I wondered about the juxtaposition between the Creative Child poems and the present (which is already the past as you write it) and the layers of knowing backward glancing going on in a single collection. The omnibuses and Satan and Mr Splitfoot in his demob suit. The clerks and accountants and ledgers - the nostalgia, and the transactional notion that everything has its price.”
“I’m especially enjoying how the world in this piece moves between chronological points. Feels like the pomegranate seeds are well scattered over space/time.”
“I got lost in the pages, rereading as I went, completely absorbed. They have sat with me since, images and lines rolling in and out of my consciousness at random moments. I love how you conjure a dream world that messes with reality but somehow seems grounded and 'normal' even though it’s snapping all sorts of psychological and emotional synapses.”
A long poem in the pastoral manner. A warm blissful dream of Arcadian pastures, innocent skies and lolling figures. Golden Age poetry which lulls and seduces. Verse which is both ambient and rippling with sensuality. Uncatchable hot nostalgia in a grand eclogue tradition.
In 2024 a group of us staged a literary lecture based on this book which incorporated magickal rituals to raise Pan. Of which someone said “overwhelmed (in a good way) on every level -- intellectual, aesthetic, spiritual, emotional.”
This special ‘Correspondences’ edition is a collaboration with artist Will of Margaret.
100 copies, each signed and numbered. Hardback, 66 pages, 16cm x 12cm, green cloth cover with gold foil illustration. Full colour endpapers containing a Will of Margaret sigil.
One maypole marker ribbon – you’ll receive red, blue or yellow.
Exclusive to this special edition of the book is a brand new prose section with three full colour Will of Margaret illustrations. The prose section outlines, for the first time, the occult ritual that lies behind the events of the poem. This fresh material is based on Crowley’s Energised Enthusiasm essay, Schnitzler’s Dream Story, and the real life ritual we enacted in 2024.
Here Will of Margaret describes her own relationship with the book – “Since first reading it I have been inside The Idyllegy – it’s a psychedelic pastoral of sex, death, and golden golden golden meadows, which became for me an open vessel. A field in which surges of excess could arrive as vision. A channel held open, into which I was willing to breathe Love.”
The first ten copies sold will have been specially blessed in a ritual within Grail legend church Rosslyn Chapel and marked as such. THESE HAVE SOLD NOW.
“Thank you so much for keeping language alive. If there is a magical world behind the ragged curtain, I’m sure its inhabitants shine bright every time you release new poetry, I know I do.”
“These are not collections of loosely linked pieces but fastidiously structured literary works that demonstrate a fertile imaginative range.”
“Afterwards I felt entirely scattered and transformed across the room, it felt like I’d walked through many lives from my bed. Your words are like liquid and spoke to something very ancient in me.”
“One of the best events I’ve ever been to. I felt completely overwhelmed on every level – intellectual, aesthetic, spiritual, emotional.”
“Poems that shoot the soul of the world straight into our veins like it’s the strongest of drugs. That’s what Thomas Sharp’s poems do.”
“... surreal, majestic and insightful … Thomas Sharp is so magician-like.”
“The charged, New Weird atmosphere – at times reads like a rolling thundercloud of prophetic pondering.”
“It’s as if I’ve stumbled upon an endless reservoir of thought.”
Things I’m doing
-
The Francis Crick Institute – poetry workshop
Evening of 14th October
Poetry workshops as part of The Francis Crick Institute’s Ancient DNA Late event
-
Jack and Jill
25th November, 7pm, Bethnal Green.
Launch of new Jack and Jill book, plus a live performance of the work with original choral music by Sarah Kershaw.
-
The Abyssmass Variety Show
6th December, Bethnal Green.
Chaos, tomfoolery, music, poetry and jestering on the subject of the Abyss. Free tickets released soon.
“Otherworldly genius!”
“A truly memorable event [that] attracted an eclectic mix
of first time visitors who descended on the Bank of England.”
“A commitment to dense, often thorny language with frequent unpredictable turns. Strange images and allusions adorn the poems.”
“A brain and a spirit like no other.”
Biography
After I left the English West Mid Lands village of my childhood – a hedged-in place comfortable with crop circles, crumbling churches and darkness behind cottage doors – they dug up an old field and discovered Europe’s largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure. I have to accept this as a metaphor. I was conceived in Christine Keeler’s London bedroom – she was the beautiful at the centre of a scandal which almost brought down the British Government.
If you’re looking for me as a Creative Director then go here
"There are good books out there, but it’s hard to find good poetry … there is depth and textured substance otherworldly in these words and works."
“Escapism, reality, futuristic, eternal – in shades all. Scathing, delightful, transcendent, trippy, sexy and mind bending.”
“Impeccably edited and typeset … Sharp is in full control of the effects he is deploying.”
“Your Arcadia makes me want to vomit Love.”
Happenings & creations
-
![]()
So beautiful and strange and new
A happening in the Bank of England. Inspired by Kenneth Grahame, who worked at the Bank for thirty years, and his depiction of Pan in The Wind in the Willows.
An art installation and musical performance which was also a genuine magick spell to ask the egregore of money to propagate towards artists and peace. Created with Will of Margaret, Sorori and Stop, Look and Listen.
-
![The outside of Shoreditch Fire Station with "LOVE IS THE RUNNING TOWARDS", a line of poetry by Thomas Sharp, painted above the entrance.]()
The running towards
Drawn from a longer commissioned poem, this single line appears above London’s Old Street fire station. It has become a landmark piece of art in the capital, being photographed and shared daily. The longer poem, about the bravery of firefighters, has been read at funerals and in church sermons. You can read it here.
-
![The Idyllegy poetry lecture taking place in a large ornate room. There are several people seated and facing Thomas Sharp who is standing at a podium. A large projector screen displays a photo of Owen Barfield.]()
The Idyllegy – an unravelling
A one hour literary lecture based on my Arcadian book ‘The Idyllegy’. Partnering with Eleanor Robins, Will of Margaret, Francesca Way, Mario Epsley, and Sarah Kershaw, the happening was a poetic exploration of fragments, sex, nostalgia and meadows, as well as a magickal ritual to raise Pan.
-
![A glass lantern emitting colorful light, located in a dark, wooded area surrounded by trees and foliage at night.]()
The Dataset's Dream
A wilderness installation. Experiencers listen to a twenty poetic audio of a dataset having her first dream, whilst encounter beautiful casket sculptures. Visual artist Bryony Ella and I were commissioned to create this for the UK Centre for Hydrology and Ecology.
-
![A poster for Thomas Sharp's art show titled "The Abyssmass Variety Show" featuring surreal desert imagery with sand dunes, a dark mountain, and spirals, layered with a frame and abstract objects including a winged gear, a spiral, and beetles.]()
The Abyssmass Variety Show
My long poem ‘Changeling’ – about Aleister Crowley and Victory Neuburg sex-magicking in the desert and crossing the abyss – designates December 6th as Abyssmass. In 2024 I marked this most exciting of days by hosting the Abyssmass Variety Show which featured an incredible line-up of artists and performers.
-
![Thomas Sharp speaking to a group of people by the Bank of England.]()
Circling the square mile
Building from my pamphlet ‘The Weeping Cufflinks’, which posits that London’s City Traders are the faery folk the old tales warned us about, a group of us have begun planting the world’s largest faery ring around the Square Mile – London’s financial district. We do this every Leap Day, February 29th. 2028 is the next planting. All credit to Marc and Rosey for the original idea.
-
![A mask of Merlin lying inside a metal box with purple ribbons, surrounded by soil and roots.]()
Jack and Jill – the buried Merlin
My book ‘Jack and Jill’ is about teenage love and psychedelia. US mask makers Natalie and Kasidy created masks for each of the main characters in the poem. I’ve buried one of the Merlin masks somewhere in England. If you own all five covers of the original printing of ‘Jack and Jill’, then you can discover the location.
-
![An image from Thomas Sharp's poetry happening 'Game Six' showing people in an art gallery viewing multimedia displays, with text and images projected on the walls, and a colorful tiled floor.]()
Game Six
‘Game Six’ was an intense poetry and video Happening about post-truth politics, Derrida, a famous chess match, and the Bhagavad Gita. Chess grandmaster and philosopher Jonathan Rowson called it “Intensely perspectival, abounds with signifiers, but pertinent, with an underlying pulse of truth seeking and even a hint of transcendence”. A collaboration with my regular partners Studio Sutherl&.
-
![An art gallery exhibiting multiple white display pedestals with text, arranged in rows on a wooden floor. The room has white walls with plaques and artwork, a small stage area with a wooden table, a piano covered with a black cloth, and lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling.]()
Twenty-five sculptures in five dimensions
A sculpture installation in Covent Garden in 2019, ‘Twenty-five sculptures in five dimensions’ is a Fluxus-inspired work about consciousness, reality, art and imagination. Of it celebrated designer Astrid Stavro said "everything about it is stunning. Such beauty and such courage. Wow."
-
![Sir Simon Russell Beale wearing a black jacket, reading one of Thomas Sharp's poems at a podium in St Martin-in-the-Fields.]()
There is a word
I was commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields to write a poem for Sir Simon Russell Beale to perform. The piece, ‘There is a word’, can be found in my ‘Language, consciousness, magick, romance’ book.
