Matt Goodfellow

About Matt Goodfellow

Matt Goodfellow was born in Withington, Manchester, and grew up in Cheadle, Stockport. An award-winning poet, he is also a former teacher, and he continues to visit schools around the UK and beyond, inspiring children and adults to get involved with poetry through his performances and workshops. When he was young, he was supposed to be a rock star and spent many years trying to be one, before realising he wasn’t really very good at music. The songs he used to write in bands became poems for children in his classes. Eventually Matt’s poems started to get published and he went part time as a teacher, part time as a poet in schools. Now, he ‘poets’ all over the UK and beyond, working with national and international organisations such as National Poetry Day, the Forward Arts Foundation, The Premier League, the National Literacy Trust and many more. Matt has published eight books of poetry. He has been a winner of the North Somerset Teachers’ Book Award and his poems have been shortlisted three times in the CLiPPA annual poetry competition. 

Matt’s poems tell deep, thoughtful, funny, sad and beautiful stories of growing up, of friendship and family and what the future might hold. In ‘Callum’ we learn about a boy whose home life is troubling.  In ‘The River’ a girl looks to her future outside of the classroom.  The poem ‘In Another Life’ finds a child experiencing a chance encounter with an elderly lady and that sets off a good deal of clever thinking about the lives we are all destined to lead. ‘Strest’ takes us into the mind of a boy trying very hard to meet expectations. Matt’s poems help us understand so much of what life can and will and might become.