Worcester Music Festival – Performing Poetry

This weekend saw the annual Music Festival in Worcester, it runs for this 3 days/ nights with artists and musicians performing free events for the public. This year I was lucky enough to take part on Saturday and Sunday evening.

SATURDAY

Ian Passey (a.k.a Humdrum Express) a multi-talented musician and poet was organised the event on Saturday evening, at The Swan and Two Nicks. He had booked bands and musicians and thought it might be good to support the sets with poetry. He invited 8 of us to perform over the night.

A fabulous evening of music and wordiness compered by The Humdrum Express 
Featuring:

PTR Williams

Get Bag. Pack Bag. Go

Nip & Tuck (From Bo Pilar and the Mountain Valley Boys

Disco Tramps

Marina del Ray 

Featuring performances from very special guest poets:

Heather Wastie, Mike Alma, William Shatspeare, Mogs, Michelle Crosbie, Andrew Owens, Suz Winspear and Nina Lewis.

Worcester Music Festival is supporting YSS Worcestershire Young Carers and Young Adult Carers 

 

 

 I supported Get Bag.Pack Bag. Go. who were a great duo. I was really pleased that the crowd listened – when you play music venues, although (as a former musician and daughter of one) it warms my heart to hear good vibes and be inspired by the energy and showmanship of the acts, it usually gets quite noisy and often the crowd will be a force for the voice to reckon with.

I wrote a special set of ‘music related’ poetry, one In Memory of Radio and 3 more on Sound City – the famous recording studio in LA having watched an amazing documentary about it a few months ago. I finished my set with a request for Cake Man. The audience response to that made me wish I had created a set from original material, but I am also quite fond and proud of some of my new music poems.

Originally I think I was going to be last on the set of poet’s to support the final band of the night, as I thought I would miss the beginning of this gig,  but I swapped into an earlier slot instead, glad because I was able to enjoy the rest of the superb evening as you may see from these photos.

© 2014 Peter Williams & Ian Passey

 

 

THE WEEKEND

There were musical events all over town all weekend. It is always a great festival.

SUNDAY

WORD & SOUND

And as if all this excitement wasn’t enough – I was back in the city performing at Word & Sound on the Sunday night. Amanda Bonnick and Jenny Hope organised a grand event – hosted superbly by Amanda. The best thing was although a core of us perform at the same places often there were some new names and faces and some of them blew my socks off (5 Star performances)! It was an absorbing evening and I thoroughly enjoyed my set.

They host these events throughout the year usually, so I am looking forward to more.

Performers included (in no particular order); Mike Alma, Sarah James, Polly Robinson, Myfanwy Fox, Suz Winspear, Kathy Gee-Wordstring, Andrew Green, Neil Laurenson, Math Jones, Susan Davidson and others.

A great night, a great weekend!

Performances and Events in the Final Week of August: 42 & Naked Lungs

Last week I had the pleasure of performing at Drummonds 42, after taking a 4 day break after the book launch. This may not sound like much, I had 48 hours of that completely OFFLINE – it was wonderful, life used to be so simple… Sometimes nerves get the better of me when I have had a performance break, fortunately that didn’t happen this time.

It was good to see writers/poets I had not seen/heard for a while and we were even treated to a bit of Musical Theatre. Catherine Crosswell is currently rehearsing Sweeny Todd for a production in Ledbury and she performed one of the songs – with props and Andrew Owen (the host) as well as treating us to her poetry. It was fantastic.

Usually these nights are themed, but once a year they do an open theme, like on the 27th. I performed a poem called ‘Missing’ which I had only performed once before in Birmingham, back in the late Spring. I performed a couple of other poems too.

There was a good variety of story and poetry and some new performers, it good to see new people come back and others take to the stage for the first time. I cannot make 42 this month as I have tickets to go and see A Night With Elvis McGonagall perform his poetry at The Hive on the same night. Elvis McGonagall

On this same evening there were events which I would have also loved to have been able to make (still hate the clashes), notably ‘Spire & Dust’ – which is usually Fire and Dust (have been meaning to go all year), they re-named it as it was taking place in the Inspire Café where Antony Owens had his book launch.

 

Knowing that I had performances over the weekend, I wanted to take it a bit easy leading up to Worcester Music Festival. However, Joe and Chris delightfully booked me last month to perform this month. I wanted to go and see what the night was like, so went to watch performers at Naked Lungs (the people who run this are organising the artistic/performance collaboration for Birmingham Literature Festival in October).

Naked Lungs happens at Cherry Reds, a lovely, small, funky venue in a pedestrianized part of the city. Unfortunately my SatNav is currently on the blink and it is so I had my route scribbled on A4 paper. Birmingham is a nightmare to drive around at the best of times, they are working on the tunnels at the moment and a lot of central traffic is either diverted or at standstill. I think it took me longer to navigate the island (roundabout) that it did travelling into the city itself. I parked up and made the stupid mistake of asking a local – who helpfully google mapped on his phone and it looked like I was miles away. Keeping the route in my head I over shot a turning and basically by the time I got off the RING ROAD – I was on the other side of the city – fortunately an area I know well as it is where Writing West Midlands are based. A 30-40 minute journey turned into a frantic hour! BUT… I got there.

The lovely Andrea Smith (a.k.a Performance poet Swingerella) was there and we got to have a half decent natter in the numerous intervals. The crowd is fairly young – so that helps me decide on material for the set. Of course there were some people my age and possibly a bit older too. I was excited to find that both Ben Norris AND Ian Bowkett were performing sets.

The whole night was fantastic with great performances from; Ian Bowkett, Ben Norris, David Timothy, Heidi Murphy  – during the evening a box was passed around for us to write ideas of topics of conversation for Benjamin Jones the resident philosopher who then pontificated on a range of subjects, a funny, quirky and cool addition to the evening and a master of improv!

A new experience was FATLiP, (Toby De Angeli, Dana Segal and Jak Stephens) although we only had 2 of them, they were mesmerising a spoken word (with heart, narrative, mixed styles and pace) prose poetry, along with music and a loud speaker. I truly could have listened to them all night. They are playing Bestival this September!

FATLiP will be performing their combination of spoken words, sounds and performance to tell unheard stories from unsuspecting places.

Sometimes it is just nice to watch and not have to sit with butterflies, nervously waiting for your turn! Although it is such a relaxing, enjoyable atmosphere I doubt I will be too worried. Mainly it was FUN, laid back, well organised and FUN!

I managed to learn another new poem for Worcester Music Festival (only wrote it last week) so I am planning on being able to connect properly with the audience on at least some of the poems. It is much easier to work on the performance if you are not trying to balance a book…. another reason why my next poetry collection will be in an A5 notebook! I am looking forward to getting my set ready and returning to Cherry Reds on the 25th September

 

Getting Organised, Being Sensible, Pub Theatre & Loving Life

The beginning of a new month makes me stop (well okay… pause) and inhale with a new list of goals and writing deadlines, performances and sets to plan, it always feels like I can take on the world at the beginning of the month. Having said that I am supposed to be going to watch a performance of Pub Hamlet by Fortitude Theatre at the Old Stock Joint and Pub & Theatre – which has a wonderful performance space/club room at the top.

 

Imagine having a pint with Hamlet. Would you fall for his vulnerable brooding? Would you offer some coherent practical advice to quell his indecision? Or would you just tell him to cheer the F up and grow a pair? New company Fortitude Theatre make their debut with this hilariously witty modern take on ‘The Dane’. Starring Leon Priestnall and Lorna Meehan. Written by Lorna Meehan. Directed by Zak Marsh.
Comedy Night at OJS is compared by Aaron Twitchen. Headline Act: Will Franken.
It’s FREE, however the capacity is limited so get there early to avoid disappointment.

If you are in Birmingham or at a loose end… GO! It is sure to be brilliant.

I am just too tired after a weekend of hitting submission deadlines, 2 nights performing at Worcester Music Festival and with a drive to Ludlow in the week and another one to Stafford, as well as the possibility of work starting this week, I am trying to be sensible (which is most out of character).

Today so far I have reviewed August here on the blog and sent business emails. I have to collate my expenses for the Writing West Midlands Assistant Writer job, the new term kicks in in a fortnight and there are new and exciting developments there too. I will blog about that when I am allowed to (confidentiality and all that)!

I have a long list of opportunities to get written/scheduled up in my already full writing diary, I have 2 sets of poetry to practise for performances this week, about 5 things to research and some tickets to book *BLF* Birmingham Literature Festival, just around the corner in October.

I AM LOVING the fact that term started today and I am NOT yet back at school – so far this year on my -to pay the mortgage mission- I have a regular half day each week, hoping, like last year there will be some other schools that opt to have regular supply, until then I will write whilst waiting for the phone to ring. I managed to survive the summer with no income but now need to build the savings pool back up, plus I have my younger brother’s wedding and Christmas to think about!

LOVING today though – a full on writing day – a stop and have a coffee day – a ‘I made the RIGHT decision day’ – a thank God I jumped the leap of faith day…