Only Brendan Cleary could wake up '…. in Czechoslovakia in the peaceful suburb of Prague with a splitting head from too much 80% vodka and now not only talk the language, have a beautiful Czech wife, 3 handsome healthy children (whose names escape him), read Kafka in the original and a pocket sized Philip Marlowe in the Czech translation..'

Honed by his experience as a live performer, Brendan Cleary's lyrics have a hard-hitting immediacy as he questions his place in the world around him and his affiliation to the culture and traditions of his country of birth. These are not poems for the fainthearted, but they provide insights into the human spirit simply not on offer in the work of less courageous artists. Cleary founded Echo Room Press - the magazine typically published a mix of new emerging voices often with links to Northern, regional urban centres - and was editor of Stand Magazine. While publishing a number of full collections throughout his career as well as in many magazines and a prodigious number of small press pamphlets.

Martin Mooney noted the importance of pamphlets in Cleary’s work ‘architecturally’ shaping different voices and blocks of work. From early in his career much of his work has been characterised by its conversational tone, one that "seems to aspire to a state of speech that is highly eloquent, almost as if it is a betrayal to have to write down the poem".

He currently lives in Brighton where he edits a new incarnation of The Echo Room magazine launched in 2012 with support from Pighog Press. Cleary describes his editorship as a quest to discover an urgency in poetry that was missing in the mid-80s and to publish poets willing to 'get their hands dirty'. The new magazine published many poets who had appeared in the original series of magazines and retained much of its original low budget style including a Matthew Caley designed cover and a substantial number of typos.