John Lyons (poet)

John Lyons
Born	October 1933 Port-of-Spain, Trinidad
Nationality	Trinidadian
Occupation	Artist, poet, educator, curator

John Lyons (born October 1933) is a Trinidad-born poet, painter, illustrator, educator and curator. He has worked as a theatre designer, exhibition adviser and as a teacher both of visual art and creative writing. As an art critic, he has written essays for catalogues, notably for Denzil Forrester's major touring exhibition Dub Transition, for Jouvert Print Exhibition and Tony Phillips' Jazz and The Twentieth Century.

Public collections that hold artwork by John Lyons include Rochdale Art Gallery, Huddersfield Art Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum's Word & Image Print Collection and the Arts Council National Collection.

His collections of poetry have been described both as being focused on "describing the texture of the Caribbean landscape and the vividness of its peoples" and contributing "to the enrichment of the West Indian British voice".

John Lyons was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. His mother died when he was nine years old, and he and his three siblings moved to live with their grandmother in rural Tobago. He returned to Trinidad in 1948 to live with his father and stepmother.

He eventually moved to London, England, and from 1959 to 1964 studied at Goldsmiths' College, School of Art, graduating with a National Diploma of Design, after which he gained an Art Teachers' Diploma at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1965–65) to teach art as a specialist subject. While studying without a grant, he supported himself through part-time jobs that included being an early morning factory cleaner, evening waiter, postman and shift-work hospital porter.

His first job was at South Shields Grammar Technical School for Boys, and in 1967 I moved to Manchester, where he worked in secondary schools for nine years, before becoming an Art and Design Lecturer in South Trafford College. While teaching there for 17 years, he continued painting and writing. He was a part-time creative writing lecturer at the then Bolton Institute of Higher Education (now the University of Bolton), between 1991 and 1998, and has been an Arvon Foundation tutor at various times since 1991.

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