Tough

Tough is the bitter-sweet taste of urban romanticism, barbecued bear and the bright lights of Grangetown, from the biggest mouth on Teesside. Poet Andy Willoughby goes back to the estates where you have to be tough to survive. Sometimes he acts tough, sometimes he talks tough. Sometimes he is not so tough after all. Tough is his first full-length collection. If you don''t like it - tough.

"...a poetical manifesto chronicling the hopes, fears, rituals, traditions and metamorphoses of a people proud of past achievements and apprehensive of future prospects, shot through with... wit, audacity and inventiveness." - Socialist Review

"These poems often breathe a humility and tenderness that belies the title." - Dreamcatcher

"Andy Willoughby is a power-house of creative energy, a renegade poet, a traveller, a performer, a ranter, a modern day shaman. His poems bring to life the hard-edged facts of life, loss and love; digging beneath the surface and drawing out the mythic and the epic qualities of everyday experience, to turn them on their heads." - Bob Beagrie

"Andy Willoughby touches the political, and social, and with the precision of a surgeon flips it on its back, to expose the heartbeat inside. Poetry at its most honest, that fills you with a stillness and sadness at the intake of breath before every F word, at each microcosm carved of stone." - Angela Readman

"Tough like meat. Not much gristle on these bones. Andy Willoughby is one of the meatiest poets I know, as loud on the page as on the stage." - Kevin Cadwallender