performance poetry
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If you’re in the Edinburgh area this Friday, get yourself along to the Scottish Storytelling Centre for this showcase with “some of the most talented spoken word artists in the UK”. It’s going to a really fun evening, with a “poetry jukebox” as part of the event as well as short sets from each of
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Greenbelt 2011 was only my second experience of the festival and my first as a contributor but that’s easily enough to make me hanker more than ever after becoming a regular Greenbelter. I can think of nothing I wouldn’t classify as a highlight, although I know that sounds rather contradictory. The only possible exception is
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Others may be going on a summer holiday, but here at Tonguefire the Ambulance Box virtual tour bus keeps chugging along. It’s a remarkable engine, managing to pull me over the Atlantic and back in a week with barely a dampened spark plug to speak of. Today, it pulls into Cadwallender, the eponymous blog of
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Thursday’s reading at St Mungo’s Mirrorball with Rob A Mackenzie and performance poet Robin Cairns was a good night. As usual, Mr Mackenzie has got in ahead of me and blogged about it already. As he says, it was a varied evening but the audience was happy to switch mood and style along with each
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I jumped into the car first thing yesterday morning and zipped up the road to St Andrew’s for my fix of StAnza 2008, listening to The Guardian CD of great 20th century poets on the way to get me in the mood. My first event was the masterclass in translation with Helmut Haberkamm and Fitzgerald
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I now have an entry on Poetcasting. Click here to go to the page and play or download MP3s of me reading “The Invention of Zero”, “To Bake the Bread” and “Tonguefire Night” as well as my Scots translation of Rilke’s “Der Panther”. It’s a long time since I heard myself reading my work, and
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It’s August, there’s a downpour a day and Edinburgh has brigadooned into the Radio 4 consciousness once again. Must be festival time. Of course, by “festival” I mean not only the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival, but the Festival of Spirituality and
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I can’t help but think that last night’s Shore Poets event could have shown some of Thursday night‘s slammers a thing or two about how imaginative and contentful something that might be described as a performance poem can be. Nowhere was that more the case than in the closing set, from the night’s main reader,
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Went to the Big Word Slam for the first time in my life last night. Does it surprise you that I was a slam virgin? Well, in the general run of things, Thursdays are not convenient evenings for me. And although I love poetry readings, I’ve never been convinced by performance poetry as a genre*.
