Fourth Friday April 27th

Poetry from Valerie Laws and Norbert Hirshhorn.  Music from Rattle on the Stovepipe.

Valerie Laws is a Northumbrian poet, performer, crime novelist, playwright (12 commissioned stage and radio plays) and sci-art specialist. Her tenth book All That Lives arises from Residencies at a London Pathology Museum and at Newcastle University working with neuroscientists. Awards include the Wellcome Trust Arts Award, two Northern Writers’ Awards, twice prizewinner in National Poetry Competition. Devises new poetic forms and science-themed poetry installations and commissions including the infamous Arts Council–funded Quantum Sheep, spray-painting haiku onto live sheep. She featured in BBC2’s  Why Poetry Matters, with Griff Rhys Jones, and live at Royal Festival Hall, London.

Norbert Hirschhorn is a physician specializing in international public health, commended in 1993 by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero.”  He now lives in London and Beirut. His poems have been published in over three dozen journals, seven anthologies, four pamphlets, and two full collections: A Cracked River, Slow Dancer Press, London, 1999, and Mourning in the Presence of a Corpse, Dar al-Jadeed, Beirut, 2008.  A third collection, Number Our Days, is due in 2012.  His work has won a number of prizes in the US and UK.

Rattle on the Stovepipe are Dave Arthur (5-string banjo, melodeon, guitar, vocals), Pete Cooper (fiddle and vocals) and Dan Stewart (5-string banjo, guitar and vocals). They’ve gained an enthusiastic folk club following with their mix of traditional songs, ballads and dance tunes from the British Isles and the Appalachian Mountains region of America. Their 2006 CD with Chris Moreton, ‘Eight More Miles’ (Wild Goose, WGS 333), and the 2009 ‘no use in cryin’ with Dan Stewart has spread their reputation more widely.

Fourth Friday March 23rd

Poetry from John Lucas and Mark Gwynne Jones.  Music from Balabustah.

John Lucas, whose Studying Grosz on the Bus won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize in 1990, has published ten collections of poetry, most recently Things to Say.  His translation of the poems of Egils Saga, available as I, the Poet Egil, is an Everyman Modern Classic.  Among his many other books are critical studies of Dickens, Arnold Bennett, and English Poetry.  92, Acharnon Street, an account of Greece, won the Authors’ Club Dolman Award for Best Travel Book of 2008.  Since then he has published Next Year Will be Better: A Memoir of England in the 1950s, now a paperback, and a novel, Waterdrops.  He is publisher of Shoestrig Press, Professor Emeritus of the Universities of Loughborough and Nottingham Trent, and he plays cornet with the Burgundy Street Five.

Five times fringe-award winner, Mark Gwynne Jones is well known for mind altering poetry with an almost music-hall edge. He mixes humour and poignancy with great skill and through collaborations with film-makers and musicians he is pushing poetry in new and exciting directions. Mark’s work is contagious, gritty and sometimes startlingly sensitive.

Balabustah are Chris Taylor (accordion) and Bernard Greenwood (violin) They play Klezmer, Traditional Eastern European, Gypsy, Jazz and original compositions.  Chris has played the accordion since the age of seven, having been taught by the renowned player Martin Lukins. She has performed in bands since she was fourteen and for fourteen years  toured with a ceilidh band in Britain, North America, Bulgaria and Hungary.  She also performs with The Walking Wounded, a Balkan gypsy rock band, and is a freelance music education consultant.  Bernard has played the violin since he was ten. He was a founder member of Stroller in the Air mime theatre for which he composed, devised and performed music as well as performing as part of the company in various venues including The Roundhouse, The South Bank, Manchester’s Royal Exchange and Bristol’s Arnolfini.   He also performs with The Crispy Hot Club, a gypsy jazz swing trio.

Fourth Friday February 24th

Poetry from the newly released Notebook in Hand, a posthumous collection of poems by John Rety.  Music from City Ramblers Revival, featuring Hylda Sims, Simon Prager and Doc Stenson.

John Rety - writer, editor and publisher, chess player, anarchist and pacifist – was best known in the literary world for his contributions to poetry, having established the long-running and much loved Torriano Meeting House poetry readings, as well as Hearing Eye Press.  His own poetry is both simple and complex, tender, funny poignant and companionable, it is also edgy, acerbic, troubled and disappointed.  Notebook in Hand presents tender lyrics and trenchant political meditations, some of which may surprise his readers, but will certainly delight.

‘His poetry always exhibits a lightness, even when dealing with dark gravities, and a clarity where he never lost touch with the serious business of living.’ – Stephen Watts

Fourth Friday January 27th

Poetry from Peter Phillips and Jon Sayers.  Music from Dave Ellis & Boo Howard.

Peter Phillips is a London  poet.  His fourth collection is No School Tie (Ward Wood Publishing). He has three previous collections from  Hearing Eye Books:  Frayed at the Edges; Looking for You;  Wide Skies, Salt  and Best Bitter.  He has co-written with Ian Purser two one-act plays set in the world of  writing: Stressed Ending and The Green Room

Jon Sayers trained as an actor and singer at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, before embarking on a long career as an advertising copywriter.  His Radio 4 play, A World Full of Weeping, a ghost story featuring the poetry of Yeats, was a Radio Times pick of the week.  He has twice won the Literary Review Poetry Competition, and is now concentrating on poetry full time.  Jon has studied with Don Paterson, Christopher Reid, Kathryn Simmonds, Maurice Riordan, John Stammers and Clare Pollard.  He was recently heard as the voice of the moon in an ad for McDonalds Happy Meals.

Dave Ellis & Boo Howard are based in London with a musical partnership that began in 1979. Dave Ellis came to London from Liverpool in 1970. He released a solo album on Sonet records in 1973 which is considered by some to be a classic guitar record of the 70s and which gave him national exposure on shows such as the Old Grey Whistle Test and In Concert.  Discovering life after folk clubs, Dave became a regular at the Marquee and played some unusual supports, including gigs with the Edgar Broughton Band at the Rainbow and Rod Stewart at Reading Festival.  In 1979 Dave formed The Reactors with Boo Howard playing bass and handling most of the vocals in the band.  Business interest followed with some high profile managers – the Police’s Kim Turner and Jackson 5′s Germaine Jackson. In 1994 Dave and Boo self-produced their only electric album Snaps under their later band name Brave Lucy. Dave and Boo’s present acoustic partnership really began in 1998 with Dave’s intricate guitar work and Boo’s mellow vocal combining to create something entirely new and all their own. Their music is completely original and ‘Maybe I Might Fall’ was their debut CD in 1999. This was followed by ‘Amber’ in 2002 and a remastering of Dave’s original 1974 Sonet album for CD in 2003. Dave has become known around the clubs for his unique guitar style plus his highly individual banjo tunes, while Boo completes their sound with her exceptional voice and superb bass playing. After 30+ years of singing together their harmonies fit like a glove. They play venues mainly around the south east of England where they have developed a loyal following. More albums have followed… in 2004 Late In The Day, and in 2007 Living On Light. There has also been a DVD of live performances, recording sessions and rehearsals in 2006. Their latest CD is Stuff in 2010 with a cajon and a tenor guitar making an appearance for the first time. All the tunes on the album, as ever, are original.

Fourth Friday November 25th

Poetry to celebrate the launch of Said and Done: new writing from Brittle Star.  Music from LiTTLe MACHiNe.

Said and Done is a new poetry anthology celebrating ten years of publishing new writers by literary magazine Brittle Star, where poetry and short fiction sit side-by-side in a buzz of conversations, energetic, intellectual and full of grace and wit.

“Here are some of the fruits of Brittle Star‘s first decade: bright and shining in their talents, various in root and branch, but all stemming from an ethical and humane impulse that honours the word.” – Mimi Khalvati

Poems, classic and obscure, are given a new voice in songs crafted by South London band LiTTLe MACHiNe: Walter Wray, Steve Halliwell and Chris Hardy. Acoustic instruments, strong melodies and watertight harmonies create songs that draw on a thousand years of poetry from the Medieval to the Metaphysicals, the Romantics to the modern. William Carlos Williams, Blake, Shakespeare, Carol Anne Duffy…all get the treatment. Poetry is the best words in the best order and LiTTLe MACHiNe have been just as careful in creating new music that can move the feet for words that move the soul.

Fourth Friday October 28th

Poetry from Jehane Markham and Jeremy Kingston.  Music from Leon Rosselson.

Jehane Markham is a poet, lyricist and playwright.  She has enjoyed reading her work to audiences for many years.  Partially trained as a painter, her written work is closely connected to the world of images, but emotional intelligence is what drives her work on to a further dimension.  She wrote the libretto for On the Rim of the World, composer Orlando Gough, a ROH commission, rolling across the national opera houses of Great Britain between 2009 -2011.  Book and libretto for Hermes, composer Pete Letanka, Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2006.  The Jehane Markham Trio, have played at Salthouse Festival, the Ledbury Poetry Festival, The Aldeburgh Fringe Festival, Freeword Centre, Keats House and Pushkin House and more.  www.jehanemarkham.co.uk

Jeremy Kingston is a theatre critic on The Times and was previously the theatre critic on the old Punch for 11 years.  He has written novels, children’s books and two West End plays. He wrote Oedipus at the Crossroads because he wondered how it came about that Oedipus, presumably not wanting to kill his father and marry his mother, did precisely that within a few days. Jeremy felt around for a different explanation.  His first play, No Concern of Mine (with John Fraser and Alan Dobie) was at the Westminster Theatre. Signs of the Times with Kenneth More and Liza Goddard ran at the Vaudeville Theatre for six months.

Leon Rossleson has been at the forefront of songwriting in Britain for over 50 years. His songs range from the lyrical to the satirical, from the personal to the political, from the humorous to the poignant. Tim McGuire, Whoever Invented the Fishfinger, Don’t Get Married, Girls, Stand up for Judas, My Father’s Jewish World, The World Turned Upside Down – no other British songwriter has written so many finely crafted songs over so many years, covering such diverse subjects and using such a variety of forms.

A 4 CD box set, 72 songs, 5 hours of music, covering 5 decades of songwriting, with an 80 page booklet containing copious notes on the personal and political backgrounds to the songs, has just been released on Fuse Records. Distributed by Proper Music Distribution. This will be its launch.

Fourth Friday September 23rd

Poetry from Nick Blair and Racker Donnelly.  Music from The Crispy Hot Club.

Nick Blair was born in Wolverhampton, which is credited with being the best place in the UK to overcome writer’s block. He went to Oxford and Edinburgh universities, then moved to London to teach E.F.L. After giving up the staffroom to go freelance and concentrate on living and writing, his poems started to appear in mainstream magazines. Last summer, his first collection, Witness Statement, was published by Hearing Eye.

Racker Donnelly is an Irish folk poet who has given over a thousand performances in Ireland, England, America and Australia.  UK Slam Champion Poet in 2005, he has featured at many arts, music, comedy and sports clubs and festivals, and at Liberty Hall Dublin, Celtic Club Melbourne, London’s City Hall, Bloomsbury Theatre with Dara O’Briain, and on Radio 4’s Saturday Live. His musical plays include A Woman’s Wartime and Wokkadoodledandy or Woking? You Must Be Joking!  The Sunday Tribune described Racker as “clever, humorous, articulate, marvellous”. Irish World described his CD as “fabulous”.  According to Ardal O’Hanlon,“This guy blew me away”.

Come and try a mouth watering portion of steamingly succulent Crispy Hot Club. Violinist Bernard Greenwood with guitarists Simon Goodwin and Andy Ruiz-Palma have been playing Gypsy Jazz and Swing since 2004, evoking the heady days of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli and The Quintet of the Hot Club of France.  Thrill to the inexorable swing rhythm and sway your body to the soaring and swooning of jazz standards cooked up with Crispy know how. Or just sit and listen quietly.  You can listen to the band at www.myspace.com/thecrispyhotclub