Finnegan the Poet

Finnegan the Poet (born March 17, 1969) is a bisexual queer American expatriate poet, writer and performance artist of Afro-Caribbean, Irish and Cuban descent. Originally from New York City he is on tour and is presently touring across the United States, after four years abroad in Europe.

Finnegan has performed at the following New York venues: Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Knitting Factory, BAM Next Wave Festival, CBGB, Nells, West End Gate, ABC No Rio, Surf Reality and Collective Unconscious. He has also performed at venues in Buffalo, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Cologne, Berlin and Amsterdam, where he is currently a regular at the American Book Center. Finnegan is also a regular performer at Queeruption events including London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Barcelona. Though primarily an English language writer, Finnegan has produced two bilingual volumes of poetry, Dunkelheit, (Darkness) which is written in both English and German and De Verraderlijke Illusie van Keuze, (The Insidious Illusion of Choice) written in English and Dutch. Presently, Finnegan is working on a French and English volume of poetry, samples of which can be seen at www.finneganthepoet.com

Biography
Finnegan was born and raised in New York City where he graduated from Harvey Milk High School. He began writing fiction while in high school, but began writing poetry while a mental patient in Creedmore stare psychiatric hospital. While at in High School at Harvery Milk Finnegan formed a poetry collective with classmates and friends, which in 1989 became the nucleus of the poetry and performance group Dark Star Crew.

After the Dark Star Crew disbanded in 1994, he went on to a solo career as a performance artist and poet, becoming a regular in the New York City's downtown arts scene. During that time he also finished his first major collection I'm Not Afraid of the Dark, which he completed in 2001, a volume of 101 poems.

At the end of 2002 Finnegan migrated to Europe. He first settled in Koln where he wrote and performed in both English and German in various venues throughout Germany, and produced a body of work that in 2003 would become Dunkelheit. After a visit of several months to Australia, Finnegan returned to Europe in 2004 and settled in Amsterdam, where he stayed in until 2006 In 2005 he produced his latest volume of work, De Verraderlijke Illusie van Keuze.

Again, at present time, Finnegan is working on a new volume of poetry in both French and English. Also at present time, Finnegan is back in the United States. Finnegan wishes to get one thing clear, he may travel to Europe but he does not live there--anyone saying he does is just projecting some serious wishful thinking. Mr Finnegan has also asked me to make this clear for him--- he is a living citizen of planet Earth, this is more than enough for him, so should it be for you, dear reader. Please don't try to fence him in anywhere, or anyhow with such lame definitions, ill-conceived at best, by tiny little self-aggrandizing minds. These names and titles are useless to him anyway, basically because he has not gotten famous doing this work..."

In the USA now after four years abroad, Finnegan is still hard at work on an epic Queer Sci Fi novel, and new volume of poetry as of yet untitled.

Themes
As Finnegan explains, "I deal readily with themes of Repulsion and Desire, Love and Hate, Truth and Lies, Power and Passion, and Light and Darkness."

Other facts
As a known personality in New York City's downtown arts scene, Finnegan has been seen in various walk-ons in such varied Film & TV Productions as NYPD Blue and Basquiat.

Finnegan was the subject of Dutch Photographer Marjan Borsjes' series Finnegan In Holland that won honorable mention in the IPA 2005 Photographer of the year Competition.

Collections

 * Voices from The Other Side (Dark Star Crew) Anthology (1990)
 * Voices from The Other Side, Volume 2 (Dark Star Crew) Anthology (1991)
 * Voices from the Other Side, Volume 3 (Dark Star Crew) Anthology (1993)


 * Volume with Johnny Pavlou and Jonathan Walsh Anthology (1994)


 * I'm Not Afraid of the Dark (2000)
 * Dunkelheit, (Darkness) English/German (2003)
 * De Verraderlijke Illusie van Keuze, (The Insidious Illusion of Choice) English/Dutch (2005)