Poetry Mine
Biography
Geoff Jones was born in Beaufort Monmouthshire and educated at Hafod-y-ddol Grammar School, Nantyglo and Monmouthshire Training College, Newport. He taught in schools in England and later gained an M.A. (Creative Writing) at Leeds University.
He tutored the poetry, novel, short stories and autobiography modules in Open Studies at the University of Warwick and within Continuing & Professional Education at Keele University. In addition, he taught the creative writing module within the undergraduate Warwick Skills Certificate.
Geoff organised and tutored a poetry residential in the Vale of Usk and day courses in Tamworth, Staffordshire in 2004 and performed a selection of his own poetry at the Birmingham Fringe Festival in the same year. He directed Tamworth Big Poetry Day in 2005.Geoff reads excerpts from Poetry Mine in Warwick Worlds Festival in October 2009. He is a founder member of Tamworth Writers and continues to offer workshops in creative writing.
Geoff has written a childhood memoir, The Next Valley Over, of growing up in a small mining village on the north eastern rim of the old South Wales Coalfield. The research involved in writing the memoir inspired him to write a novel, The Darkness Falls, a fictionalised account of the Chartist Rising in 1839, one of the three ill fated Monmouthshire marches to Newport, beginning from his own village of Nantyglo.
Geoff is a member of Cannon Poets, Birmingham, and is learning to speak Welsh. His membership of Canoldir Male Choir, Birmingham, led him to write the lyrics for a new carol, The Innkeeper's Song first performed at the choir's Annual Christmas Concert in 2004. He lives in Tamworth, the capital of the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Mercia, in which King Offa erected his palace; the very same Offa who built the dyke separating England from Wales.
Geoff is a member of Beaufort Male Choir, Ebbw Vale and tutors a new writing club called Write On! on Saturday mornings in his childhood village of Nantyglo.