The London Poetry Festival 2009 — a four-day showcase of contemporary poetry from the UK and beyond — is celebrating its fifth year, and 2009 promises to be the biggest and best event yet. With a brand new team behind it, the Festival is playing host to talented young poets like Matt Merritt, Sam Meekings and Simon Freedman, Adam Horovitz, as well as experienced poets like Michael Horovitz and putting on four nights of fantastic literary and musical entertainment from 7th – 10th August.
http://www.londonpoetryfestival.com
As always, the London Poetry Festival has also offered five poetry residencies to poets whose works have caught the eyes of the new team. Previous Poets in Residence include Tom Chivers, Luke Wright and Philip Ruthen among many others, and this year’s quintet represents an exciting mix of poetic styles and ideologies. The 2009 Poets in Residence are Aiko Harman, Rebecca Atherton, Bryan Oliver, Christian Ward and Tony Fernandez.
The London Poetry Festival runs from Friday 7th to Monday 10th August, 7.30pm – 10.30pm each evening. The venue is Waterloo St John’s Church, Waterloo, SE1. For more information contact any of us at the Festival Team:
Featival Team:
Festival Residency and Education Director: Claire Askew
claire.askew@londonpoetryfestival.com
Festival Public Relations Director: Sharon Harriott
sharon.harriott@londonpoetryfestival.com
Festival Director: Munayem Mayenin
contact@londonpoetryfestival.com
http://www.munayemmayenin.co.uk
Published on
July 15, 2009 in
Events.
Middle East Readings
with Hassan Blasim and Joumana Haddad
This Sunday (19 July 2009).
13.00. the Bluecoat, Liverpool.
Two trailblazing Arabic writers – Hassan Blasim from Bagdad, and Joumana Haddad from Beirut – read from and discuss their contributions to Madinah: City Stories from the Middle East.
Hassan Blasim was born in Baghdad in 1973. Having fled Iraq in 2004, he currently lives in Finland. As well as director of numerous short films and one Kurdish feature film, Hassan is a poet and short story writer with work published in various magazines, websites and anthologies. He is co-editor of the Arabic literary website www.iraqstory.com. His first full short story collection, The Madman of Freedom Square, is launched by Comma Press this summer.
Joumana Haddad was born in 1970 in Beirut. She is a poet, translator and journalist and head of the cultural pages in the prestigious An Nahar newspaper, as well as administrator of the IPAF Literary Prize (often referred to as the ‘Arab Booker’) and editor-in-chief of Jasad, an Arabic cultural magazine specialising in literature and art of the body. She has published several widely acclaimed poetry collections, including I Did Not Commit Enough Errors, and The Mirrors of Passers By.
Part of the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival.
Free – booking required (book on www.thebluecoat.org.uk or call 0151 702 5324)
This Wednesday we celebrate all things Darwinian!
With the first public appearance of the Liverpool Evolving Words poetry group at the Dead Good Poets Society guest night. A selection of the group will be showcasing new poetry written during a Darwin-inspired residency at Liverpool World Museum. The group has been mentored by Dinesh Allirajah, jazz poet & short-story writer extraordinaire. We expect great things from them and know this will be an exciting performance.
Plus Open Floor with prizes for any poems with an Darwinian theme – and you can define Darwinian as poetically as you wish!
Wednesday 15th July 2009
8pm
The 3rd Room Everyman Bistro
£3 / £2 / £1
Plus – if we’re lucky and she’s recovered from her jet-lag – there may be an appearance from the North West’s most travelled poet, Clare Kirwan! (Almost rhymes with Darwin).
Liverpool Poetry Cafe
Date: Thursday, 23 July 2009 | 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: Performance Space
Ticket Prices: Free. Ticket required.
Book Online
Hear readings from the best UK poets and developing writers at our regular monthly poetry night (fourth Thursday of the month).
Please book your free ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.
For full details of this month’s reading, contact Alex Scott-Samuel, alexss@liverpool.ac.ukThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or Pauline Rowe, paulinerowe@btopenworld.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
http://www.theliverpoolshakespearefestival.co.uk/
The Liverpool Shakespeare Festival 2009
‘There are two sides to every story . . .’
The Liverpool Shakespeare Festival is the North West’s best-known annual theatre event. The festival was successfully introduced with an acclaimed production of ‘Macbeth’ in the summer of 2007, attracting many thousands of visitors and selling out Liverpool Cathedral. In 2008, it hosted Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and their beautiful production of ‘A Winter’s Tale’ along with an outdoor cinema and Lodestar’s production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, which attracted rave reviews from local and national press.
Lodestar Theatre Company – a Liverpool-based arts organisation with charitable status, which was formed by Artistic Director Max Rubin in 2006, presents the festival. Working only with artists and practitioners from Liverpool and the North West, Lodestar’s work is characterised by a clear, dynamic acting style, innovative design and imaginative use of space. With The Liverpool Shakespeare Festival, they present Shakespeare’s greatest plays as living, breathing texts for a 21st century audience.
For 2009, Lodestar will produce their most exciting season yet at two unique and very different venues. From 10-23rd August they present ‘Hamlet’ at St George’s Hall, and from 1-13th Sept, ‘Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead’ by Tom Stoppard at Novas Contemporary Urban Centre. On 12-13th Sept, they will perform both plays ‘back-to-back’ using the same cast for both shows.
Published on
July 8, 2009 in
News.
Nathan Jones is Poet in Residence at the Bluecoat | Liverpool Art and Culture Blog.
Quote from Liverpool Art Blog
This is excellent news! Nathan Jones is a wonderful poet, writer and performer. As good as any and better than most of the long line of great Liverpool poets (ok, he’s from Wales but he’s been here long enough). I hope this doesn’t sound too gushing but I really am a fan, I’ve just been reading his blog about the residency, he’ll be responding to the various exhibitions amongst other things whilst he’s there.
“Nathan Jones will spend a year working within the Bluecoat, developing the model of a flexible and pivotal poet in residence, exploring the connections between interpretations of modern art, contemporary poetry, and arts audiences.”
http://nathanatthebluecoat.wordpress.com/
A reminder that this prestigious event is this evening Thursday 2nd July 2009. Doors open at 7.30pm for an 8pm start at the Greenroom, Whitworth Street Manchester (there’s a map on the gig guide at www.writeoutloud.net)
BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting a second series of Poetry Slam programmes in 2009 and, after a series of closely fought local slams – Bolton, Wigan, Salford, Wirral, Liverpool, Manchester and more – this is the North West Slam Final.
All of the contestants are top performance poets who already are slam champions in their own right! This promises to be an excellent evening with superb performance poetry.
We also have music from one of the North’s leading musicians, Kevin Bates, who will play a specially commissioned set in between the first and second round of the competition.
So a night not to be missed – see you there.
If you haven’t got a ticket there are a limited number of tickets available so ring the Greenroom box office on 0151 615 0500! £5/£3 (concessions) now and get yours.