DJB – Darren J Beaney

A bit about me –

I live in East Preston, on the West Sussex coast ~ 6 miles west of Worthing & ~ 20 miles west of Brighton (where I lived for a long time). I share my home with Jo, Esme, Ollie, Annie Cat, Eddie Cat and Woody Dog.

Jo is my wonderful wife, we met in 1999 and for me things, life, etc got better from then on! Like most couples we have had loads of fun, adventure and thankfully not very many downs… In 2000 we bought our first home, a converted fire engine – ‘Brian‘

In 2003 we got wed – I wanted to show the world how much Jo meant to me and she agreed with the idea.

In 2004 we had Esme and in 2007 she was joined by Ollie.

In 2014 we left Brighton and settled in East Preston. In 2017 I gave in and Annie (the rescue cat) became a fixture around our house, joined in 2019 by Eddie (another rescue cat). In 2020 Woody (a bonkers, Greek rescue dog) joined the gang!

I love listening to music, mainly punk.

I have MA in Creative Writing from the University of Brighton. I have written the first and last chapter of a story (still need to fill the gaps), an 8000 word short story called Pickles and a 30 minute play called Cacophony: The Story of Ye Bawdreaming Players – The First Band of Anarchists. Who knows what will happen with any of them.

I am half of Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word – a poetry, prose and flash fiction evening. We started in January 2019 and were hosting the evening in Brighton on a bi-monthly basis until February 2020 – then Covid-19 hit. Since April 2020 we have hosted Flight of the Dragonfly in the virtual world of Zoom and now host every 6 weeks. We also occasionally host poetry book launches. In June 2021 we launched a quarterly e-journal, Flights and also started as a small publishing press.

In 2022 I started back room poetry.