DR MARTIN KISZKO

Martin Kiszko is a composer, writer, and librettist. He is fondly known as the ‘UK’s green poet’ — a moniker given to him by audiences around the world. His one man-show, based on his two books Green Poems for a Blue Planet and Verse for the Earth, has been performed from Los Angeles to China, Dubai to India, and from the Edinburgh Fringe to the Royal Albert Hall.

Over the past few years Martin has written his fun poetry primer and collection, Inversebrates, and his autobiography Major and Minor Adventures in Lah Lah Land — published by Pegasus. He wrote and published the world’s first epic eco-poem King Frank & the Knights of the Ecoquest. The radio and podcast adaptation, starring Toyah Willcox, won the Bronze Award for Best Children/Young Adult Programme at the New York Radio Festival. The poem was also performed live with a cast of sixteen at the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai.

His recent book, a novel, The Great Riverbank Robbery, set in an imaginary woodland in the UK, launched in Bristol in October 2024, and his new collection of 72 poems, Heartchery, launches in November 2025.

As a film composer, he has composed over 200 scores, released nine albums with Europe’s finest orchestras, and was awarded a Composer of the Year Award by the Ivors Academy. His oeuvre includes well-known BBC TV themes as over 160 natural history film scores for BBC, C4, WNET, TLC, and National Geographic — many working alongside Sir David Attenborough. Martin also pioneered the use of recording ethnomusicological samples overseas for use in Natural History film scores and introduced the first East European orchestras to the BBC Natural History Unit.

As an academic he received a BA Creative Arts from Bretton Hall College (University of Leeds), and from the University of Bristol, a PGCert. Radio, Film, and Television, PhD in Ethnomusicology and an honorary DLitt for his eco-poetry, performance poetry, and music. He also co-founded the long-running successful MA in Composition of Music for Film at Television at the University of Bristol.