Play With Me

From NHS overdose clinics to overrun gardens, talking Cambodian treehouses to the teenage perversion of a young Scot on a French Exchange, Pedersen's poetry is a rich and fantastical feast of flavours, landscape and language. On the menu is everything from iced oysters and chateaubriand to pickled onions and Buckfast-soaked bread sticks. Like the man himself, these poems will tingle toes and raise eyebrows in equal measures. Michael Pederson is slowly building a reputation as a name to look out for, and has received plaudits from Stephen Fry and Irvine Welsh; as a spoken work poet, his readings are as memorable as they are witty, laced with an electric energy, as he recites from memory his highly engaging, accessible poetry. Michael Pederson, along with Kevin Williamson, hosts Neu! Reekie!, avant-garde nights of poetry, music and animated short films.

Michael Pedersen has published two successful chapbooks and an acclaimed debut collection Play with Me (Polygon, 2013). His second collection, Oyster, surfaced in 2017 and was illustrated by - and performed as a live show with - Frightened Rabbit's Scott Hutchison. Pedersen was: named a 'Canongate Future 40'; a finalist in the 2018 Writer of the Year at the Herald Scottish Culture Awards; awarded the John Mather Trust Rising Star of Literature Award 2014; and won the 2015 Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship - travelling to Grez-sur-Loing in France.  Pedersen also co-runs and co-founded Neu! Reekie! - a prize winning arts collective, known for producing cutting-edge shows all over the globe and hosting take-overs for National Galleries, National Museums and major festivals.