Former Children’s Laureate and Pen Pinter Award winner, performer, broadcaster, author and scriptwriter, Michael Rosen brings his new one-person show, Getting Through It, to Lighthouse on Friday 21 March.

A powerful and personal double bill of monologue and poetry that delves deep into the themes of trauma, grief and mortality, in the first part, The Death of Eddie, Michael recounts the death of his son, Eddie, from meningitis at the age of 18. The show looks at the grief of losing his son at a young age, and the often strange and contradictory mix of emotions felt during the mourning process. This story, memorably captured in Michael’s children’s book The Sad Book, is told here in vivid and unsparing detail.

In the second part, Many Kinds of Love, Michael recalls how he contracted COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic. Spending 48 days in intensive care and being placed into an induced coma, he had a 50 per cent chance of dying. This piece not only looks inwards at the effects of COVID on Michael’s body and mind, but looks outwards to how his life was saved by NHS workers working within a government policy that looked to sacrifice an older generation for the sake of attempting to achieve herd immunity.

Both experiences are amongst those addressed in Michael’s critically acclaimed 2023 book Getting Better – Life Lessons on Going Under, Getting Over It, and Getting Through It.

Deeply personal yet universally relatable, Getting Through It speaks to anyone who has loved and lost, anyone who has struggled and survived and anyone who knows what it is to be human.

Michael Rosen says: “I have found that the best way for me to handle the 'big stuff' that I've been through, is to write about it in 'bits', fragments. Then, when I string these fragments together, they tell a story of what happened and how I feel about it. It's like a mosaic. As the title says, it is indeed about 'getting through it', but I very much hope that in telling the story, it helps anyone watching find that though that we might bend, we can find ways to not break. One of the ways, as you might expect with me, has been to discover that there is, incredibly, an absurd and comic side to this.”

Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s most beloved writers and performance poets. He has written over 200 books, including The Sad Book, a meditation on bereavement after the death of his son Eddie, Many Different Kinds of Love, a story of life, death and the NHS and Getting Better Life Lessons on Going Under, Getting Over It, and Getting Through It, an examination of loss and mourning and what comes next. 

He is Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths University and has presented the Radio 4 show Word of Mouth since 1998. He regularly appears at literary festivals across the UK and visits schools and teacher training departments to perform and to give advice on teaching children’s literature.

MICHAEL ROSEN: GETTING THROUGH IT
A Double-Bill of Poetry 

FRIDAY 21 MARCH

7.45pm (THEATRE)
Age guidance: 15+

Tickets and information 01202 280000 

www.lighthousepoole.co.uk