Andrew Franks

Andrew Franks was born in Eastbourne in the early sixties, a skimming stone’s throw away from Soul Bay. He has worked in local government, theatre, as an English language teacher, a cycle courier in London, a musician and for magazine and newspaper companies around the world. He currently lives on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, where he hosts a weekly radio show ‘London Calling’ on 2rrr, plays guitar in ‘The Freds’, 'The Butterfly House' & 'The Last Sunbathers ', He also performs his poetry on a regular basis and paints pictures of Beachy Head lighthouse, The Long Man of Wilmington and the waves breaking on the sand at Shelly Beach (Manly) in his spare time. He is also responsible for the surprisingly popular blog 'The Things I miss about England'. 

 

First inspired to write poetry after long nights drinking coffee and eating toast listening to The Pop Group, A Certain Ratio and Prince Buster with fellow members of the Daffy Duck Commando Squad. His first poems were printed in Eastbourne’s seminal new wave fanzine Spectrum. He has subsequently written comprehensively about cricket for JM96* and Inside Edge. He has also written for Cosmopolitan & Elle Decoration amongst others as a sports, travel and music journalist - He currently works as a casual sports editor for The Guardian in Sydney.

 

His first collection ‘Scratched in the stars, sprawled on the sand’ (Soul Bay, 2009), has had to be reprinted four times. His second collection ‘The last of the great British traitors’ (Soul Bay, 2011) was in part inspired by his father’s autobiography (discovered posthumously). Franks also contributed ‘Engels’ Ashes’ to a short story compilation ‘Thirteen’ (Soul Bay, 2013). His third collection of poetry 'Sunflower Eclipse over Troia Nova' (Soul Bay, 2018) was published in November 2018 - celebrated with the last ever book launch at the home of Australian contemporary poetry, Collected Works, Melbourne.

Cºuntrycide - a long piece written about the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union was released at 11:00pm  GMT on Friday 31st January 2020 as a spoken word recording. The printed version of Cºuntrycide  is due to be published in Andrew's fourth collection (December 2020).

 

Andrew is also a founder member of the English Beach Poets Society. He is responsible for the surprisingly popular blog 'The Things I miss about England' and he publishes and edits a new monthly lo-fi poetry publication ‘the poetry of desire…’ available from Desire Books & Records (Manly).

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He can also be found at http://www.sydneypoetry.com/profile/AndrewFranks