Alright! I’m Maria Ferguson, and I’m a poet and theatre maker from Romford in Essex. My début one-woman show Fat Girls Don’t Dance won the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show in 2017. Follow-up show Essex Girl won Show of the Week at VAULT Festival in 2019 and was shortlisted for Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Award.
My debut collection, Alright, Girl? was published by Burning Eye in March 2020 and was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. It is available to listen to as a binaural recording as part of the Living Record Festival, which runs from 17th Jan – 22nd Feb 2021.
You can find out more about the festival by reading my blog post
And you can order your signed copy here
“Extremely personal, yet highly relatable, Alright, Girl? is a frank exploration of class, gender and belonging. Maria Ferguson reflects on her working-class heritage, her journey into womanhood and the choices she must now face in an age of austerity and gentrification.
Full of hear and humour, these poems chart the familiarity of East End pubs, the pangs of loss, the mercy of love and the inescapable bonds of female friendship”
Alright, Girl? was launched on Burning Eye Books’ Instagram page in April and you can watch it back on my IGTV, Facebook and YouTube channels.
Flawless. An essential read for the 2020s. Salena Godden
Ferguson is a poet for the people, washing her dirty poems in public and holding your eye as she does so. We need more voices like hers, democratic and challenging. Clever, funny, frank and uncompromising. A warrior. Joelle Taylor
Highly Commended for the Forward Prize
Was gonna be chill about this but actually NAH MATE. I never in my WILDEST dreams thought my poetry would appear in this book, let alone a poem about burning my eyebrows off after too much tequila. Thank you Forward Prizes & THANK YOU Burning Eye Books LOOK AT THAT LIST 😲🥳😍
My latest one-woman show
Essex Girl
Essex Girl: a young working-class woman from the Essex area, typically considered as being unintelligent, materialistic, devoid of taste and sexually promiscuous. Collins English Dictionary
After my run at VAULT Festival, I took Essex Girl to pubs around the UK with Inn Crowd, as well as festivals including Brainchild and Port Eliot. I then did a UK theatre tour from September to November 2019, and will continue to perform it once I’m finally able to again!
Essex Girl wins Show of the Week award at VAULT Festival
I am beyond surprised/excited/jubilated/losing my f**king shit that Essex Girl won Show of the Week for Week 2 at VAULT Festival 2019. I am so proud, so happy, so astounded, so pleased 😄💙💋🙌🏼💪🏼💪🏼🎉🥂🐼
Signed books available in my online shop
You can purchase signed copies of my two play-texts in my online shop! They’re both published by Oberon Books, and are available alongside my debut poetry collection Alright, Girl? (published by Burning Eye Books).
Maria Ferguson 