Niall McDevitt (1967-2022) travelled through 23 European countries with a guitar and tent, including Corsica ‘The Island of Beauty’. Returning to London, McDevitt worked as an actor/ musician in Neil Oram’s 24-hour play The Warp, Ken Campbell’s Pidgin Macbeth, and John ‘Crow’ Constable’s The Southwark Mysteries.

For radio, he was resident Pidgin poet/translator on John Peel’s Home Truths, and featured in Bespoken Word, The Robert Elms Show, The Verb, The Poet of Albion, and also such Resonance 104.4FM shows as Mining for Gold and Lost Steps.

As activist, McDevitt campaigned to secure the future of the Rimbaud/Verlaine House at 8 Royal College Street, and for the release of poet Saw Wai from Insein prison in Burma. He was renowned as a leader of epic psychogeographical walks through London esp. Shakespeare, Blake, Rimbaud, Yeats.

A fuller tribute to Niall McDevitt is published on the Waterloo Press blog.