Please welcome to 'The Clearing' Performance Poet Toby Thompson. Toby was passed the 'Golden Baton' to be my Guest by Egg Theatre Director Kate Cross MBE, who I interviewed recently for "The Good Listening To Show" LIVE at the Theatre Royal Bath.Toby is a thoughtful, thought-provoking & enigmatic 'observer' of life, with a unique cadence and a silky tone.  His poetry displays his delight in life's uncertainties & ambiguities.  His uniquely rhythmic and musical style is lyrical, beguiling, playful & poignant. Toby also performs 2 of his wonderful poems as part of this interview: "Spinning Plates" & "Tears".You can find out more about Toby at https://tobythompson.net/And you Watch/Listen to Toby's interview here: https://vimeo.com/806790863BEAUTIFUL INSPIRING WORDSMITHERYToby Thompson is a writer and performer of thoughts and feelings.  Not just his own, but somehow yours too.  His poetry displays his delight in life’s uncertainties and absurdities and his uniquely rhythmic and musical style is lyrical, beguiling, playful and poignant."...a wonderful gift for language, a deep sensibility and a penetrating sense of perspective."Sir Ken Robinson.  Renowned Educationalist and Creativity ExpertMore about Toby Thompson: Toby Thompson is the indirect descendant of the 19th Century Liberal Prime Minister, Wiliam Ewart Gladstone. Today Toby himself is a truly extraordinary contemporary creative talent. A distinguished performance poet by profession, with a love of music on the side - an articulate and passionately vocal wordsmith whose distinctive voice expresses the brilliant words that his complicated brain has put together in unique new sequences and surprising new rhymes and rhythms.Even traditionally written poetry benefits from being lifted from the black type on the white page and read aloud by someone, who understands what the poet originally had in mind. That’s true whether you’re talking about the plays of William Shakespeare or the popular poetry of Roger McGough. With Toby Thompson, he rehearses his own original poems repeatedly in his head, until he’s happy with them, then remembers them and only when satisfied, will he express them directly and distinctively to a live audience in a theatre - or alternatively record them on a video for posterity. In his primary school, the teachers called young Toby ‘the observer’. To this day he finds inspiration in strange places, everywhere, in conversations, in audio recordings, in football commentaries, as well as in contemplating impermanence and vastness. He acknowledges the wisdom of Jung: “That which you most need will be found where you least want to look.”Now the mature Toby escapes the solitary challenge of slow creative ‘writing’ by substituting the solitary challenge of creative cooking.The mature nomadic Toby Thompson is into Breathing, Qi Gong, Meditation, Music, Silence and Yoga. He was recommended and passed the 'Golden Baton' by Kate Cross MBE, Director & Curator of the Egg Theatre in Bath. This turned out to be a totally brilliant recommendation.  Hear for yourself, here..."The Good Listening To Show: Stories of Distinction & Genius" Facebook Group is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/842056403204860