Flying the Cage
Ah, gigs! This is the way to see in the New Year, especially after a feverish, bed-bound Christmas. Busyness and travel, microphones and friends old and new, new sights and sounds.
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If you're in or near Bournemouth tomorrow, I'll be headlining for Freeway Poets at the Winchester, alongside poets and performers including: Chris Coppen; Paul David Beard and Anathema. Click here to see their Facebook event page.
On Friday, I'm in London at the Poetry Cafe, Betterton Street. I'm particularly excited about this one – it's the spoken debut of The Open Cage, a pure verse libretto I co-wrote with Adam Donen. The libretto grew out of poetic spat, about mythology in general and Icarus in particular, after a Poetry Olympics Superjam at the 100 Club, which became a sequence of poems and then, at Danyal Dhondy's suggestion, an opera.
It's this Friday at 7:30 pm and you can book tickets here if you wish. There will be also be more poetry from me, from the manuscript I put together on the Hawthornden Fellowship last year, as well as from Turning, plus music from Adam Donen, and a selection of fine refreshments.
Then, next Monday, I'm up in Leamington Spa reading for the PureGoodandRight open mic night at the gloriously-named Sozzled Sausage in Regent Street. Tickets are £3 or £2 on the door.
Hope to see you, dear reader, at one of them. If I don't have the pleasure, however, Happy New Year!
The Open Cage was performed as an opera at The Yard Theatre in Hackney last October – here it is on YouTube .
