Public Address Tour 2015
When I started trying to
think seriously about making a career out of Saying Words As A Poet, the place
I kept being sent to was this organisation called Apples & Snakes. I went up to a workshop in Newcastle led by
Kirsten Luckins, and joined their various Facebook groups, followed them on Twitter
and perused their website.
Nay, I have pillaged their
website. Like the hungry Viking that my ancestry
dictates, I went through their website devouring their articles and sample
workshops. I have used their workshop
plans many times, obviously changing and adapting to suit my own devious ends.
For those of you who don’t
know, Apples & Snakes support and promote poetry, spoken word and
theatre-poetry fusions. They work on a
national and regional level, putting on events, gigs, workshops and advocating
for the genre. Alas, they have no Yorkshire-specific
region, we tend to fall under the North East category.
So I was delighted to ‘represent’
Yorkshire as part of their 3rd Public Address Tour. This tour takes artists from across the
regions and sends them up and down the country.
The theme was Soapbox. Standing
on a platform and declaring something important in your heart.
Where was I to start? I write about politics, but often as an
uplifting Never Surrender style, rather than specific topics. So I decided to write about the plight of the
bees. Cos if the bees go, humanity will
be next. I decided to set the piece in a
post-apocalyptical future, partly because my partner was playing loads of
Fallout and I’d just finished The Road.
With support from director
Hannah Silva, we all took our pieces and crafted them over a lovely long amount
of time. The end result was a fantastic
showcase, Shagufta Iqbal’s
uncompromising poetry on Muslim identity, feminism and true beauty, Justin Coe’s honest reflective
look on growing up and homosexuality in schools, Keisha Thompson’s satirical and
darkly comic monologue about Black identity, Ingrid McLaran’s
fantastical romp through a mindscape, Helen Seymour’s
disarmingly funny exploration of our obsession with death and AJ McKenna’s hilarious
(and divisively touching) performance piece about love, loss, rice and water
pistols.
I was part of the
Newcastle and London leg of the tour, but it was a privilege to meet and
perform and work alongside really exciting poets.
Going waaay back to when I
was a student, Sticks & Stones in Leeds was a cracking night because it
brought talented poets from across the country.
It’s a sharing of ideas, styles and talents that is essential, putting a
theatre director like Hannah with poets is essential. Putting poets who are parents alongside poets
who are just starting university is a sharing of different perspectives, and I’m
sure audiences appreciated this kaleidoscope of characters we presented on
tour. That’s how we learn, and audiences
learn, and I want to keep that culture alive in York.
BUT WAIT
It’s not over yet! Catch the gang tonight in Southampton and
Friday in Brum
Monday 26 October, 7.30pm | Part of SO: To
Speak | Nuffield Theatre, Southampton SO17 1TR
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Friday 13 November, 7.30pm | Hexagon Theatre, Mac Birmingham, Birmingham B12 9QH
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Friday 13 November, 7.30pm | Hexagon Theatre, Mac Birmingham, Birmingham B12 9QH
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