Write Way Up! As part of The Lyric Lounge
Posted on 12th May 2009
Seven poets perform new work, inspired by museum artefacts.
One ordinary box…seven objects inside…and seven specially commissioned poets to take them out and bring them to life. Prepared to be wowed as live literature collides with music and visuals – and new voices make old things come alive. Handle with care and be sure to hold the ‘Write Way Up’ in this multimedia extravaganza. Directed and mentored by Kevin Fegan. Produced by Pam Thompson for WORD! This night is in partnership with Leicestershire’s Open Museum and will explore both artefacts and Olympic values.
Leicestershire’s Open Museum is an exciting and unique museum without walls. Through the Resource Box, Artworks and Moving Objects loans collections, thousands of museum objects, art works and museum displays are brought to the communities of Leicestershire and Leicester every year.
For more information about the loans schemes, visit the Open Museum’s website at www.leics.gov.uk/open_museum
Featured Poets
Anne Holloway
I was born in Titchfield in Hampshire in 1964. I grew up in Bath then moved to London. I have had all sorts of jobs including managing a snooker club, selling shoes, cleaning, cooking, sales rep-ping, working at a Fringe Theatre, telesales, transcribing TV and radio programmes for a news monitoring agency. I went to Crete one summer, but came back after six years, with two children in tow. I now live in Nottingham where I run the art shop at Nottingham Trent University, have three children, a partner, a dog, gerbils, chickens and bees.
I used to read a lot as a child and to write poetry, but gave up as I grew older, in fact during my twenties I read little and wrote even less. When I came back to the UK from Crete, I needed to support a family and landed the job at Nottingham Trent. Being surrounded by students encouraged me to study for a degree in English, part time. I took a writing module as part of the course and realised I should have been writing all along. I carried on to do an MA in Creative Writing and studied poetry under Mahendra Solanki, a fierce task-master, after which I thought I’d steer clear of poetry for a while and stick to fiction instead. When I saw the ad for the Heritage commission I thought I should give it a go. I think if I intend to call myself a writer I should involve myself in writing projects. I was swept up in the atmosphere of the audition. I had forgotten how much I enjoy performing to an audience. The poets were a real mixture, lively, some of them so young with so much to say. I had no idea I would be selected as one of the seven poets for the project but was thrilled to have been part of the evening. More importantly, I came away wanting to write poems again. I was surprised to be chosen and it is rather daunting as I’ll have to deliver the goods now, but I’m really looking forward to finding out who the other writers are and how they work, as well as meeting Kevin Fegan. I’m intrigued to know how the workshop sessions will develop and how we will put together the final performance.
Jason
I am one half of performance duo Random Rambling (Sureshot being the other half). As part of Random Ramblings we have put on sell out comedy shows for the Leicester Comedy Festival for the last two years. However, comedy is not my focus point. I aspire to perform and combine the skills of the Griot: story telling, poetry, comedy, drama. I have compeered and performed across the Midlands . The highlight of my performance journey so far would be performing on the same bill as Benjamin Zephaniah for Black History month at Nottingham Jongleurs in 2005. I truly love performing as it gives me a chance to express myself and share the creative energy of others.
I got into writing by accident. I would go to various spoken word events with Sureshot and watch him and others perform amazing poetry. I was inspired to write my own poetry, and after a particualrly bad day at work I got the courage to put my name down on an open mic slot at Black Drop in Nottingham. The audience seemed to enjoy the poem and I enjoyed reciting it, so I decided to write more, and I have continued from there.
I went for the commission because it was on a subject which I have always been interested in but never actually written about: heritage. I also wanted to the chance to work with mentors, as I have never done this before, and I truly think it would benefit my work.
I was extremely excited about being chosen for the commission, as it is my first, and it was the challenge I had been craving. As an artist I want to be pushed creatively by myself and others as I think it helps me to vary my styles and extend my performance and writing skills.
However, what I am most looking forward to is working with the mentors and other artists. I love the creative process and the inspiration other artists share as much as performing in front of an audience. Inspiration can never be controlled or predicted and therefore to me it is magical.
Deborah Stevenson
Deborah Stevenson is a 19 year old East Londoner who, as you can see, enjoys talking in the third person. She also enjoys long walks on the beach and Guinness. She is currently in her first year of studying creative and professional writing at the University of Nottingham. Simultaneously to her studies, Deborah is being followed by Channel 4 for a year, as they monitor her achieving her goals. One of those goals has climaxed in the 3 day festival she is helping to organise for 10,000 people in the Roundhouse Theatre, Camden. And last but not least she works part time as a waitress to pay the rent.
I heard on Tomorrows World once that babies know how to swim straight after birth. That is how writing came to me 16 years later. However unlike art, drama and dance, writing was the first passion that managed to push my school attendance above 50%. Since then, writing has become my un-reflected self. The linier structure writing provides, forces me to see myself in a way that mirrors cannot. Writing surpasses my self-conscious pout in pictures. That is why when Write Way Up! came along, I was so eager. Because the opportunity to write about objects unattached from my world, comes with the prospect of self exploration. Through this project I hope to see my perspective on the page. So when I got the commission I felt a new sense of confidence in my poetry, alongside an excitement to get started. An excitement that will no doubt further when working with the other poets who got the commission. Because the more I hear different types of poetry, the more I appreciate all types of poetry. And the more I appreciate all types of poetry the easier it is to write those poems that help me understand myself and in turn live my life to the fullest.
Visit www.yeardot.co.uk to find out more about Deborah’s project with Channel 4.
Najite
On stage I go by the name “Tantrum.”
I’m a 17 year old female mc from Leicester. I love to write as I find it’s the easiest way to express myself. When I start writing, my feelings just pour out and they appear clearer than they do in my head. I think it’s one of the best ways to get across a message, although it’s planned, it can come from the heart. That’s why I think it’s important to write about things that are true to you. If you write about things that you don’t believe in, haven’t experienced or don’t know about, you’re most likely to fail in making the piece quality. Ever since I knew what music was, I’ve longed to get myself involved and found myself writing songs and performing them in front of my close family from the age of around 8. I’ve always loved writing, weather it was stories, poems, or lyrics. However my passion for music has developed my main interest into writing lyrics. I think I was about 9 years old when I first started writing lyrics as a regular hobby. My older brother introduced me to garage music and challenged me to attempt writing in that area. Unable to sing, I’ve ever since had a passion for mc’ing. A few months later, I landed my first performance as a mc. Despite being young and alone on stage, I couldn’t have felt better and from that moment onwards, I’ve been eager to perform at any chance I get.I went for the Write Way Up! commission for the opportunity to perform, and that alone. I understood it was an audition for the chance to perform at The Lyric Lounge and after hearing about it on the radio, I wanted to get involved. However I had no idea, if successful I would win a commission. I didn’t even know what a commission was. I was nervous at the fact that the crowd wasn’t one I would normally perform in front of and I almost pulled out at the last second. Even after performing, I doubted myself and had no thought that I’d be considered. So it was a big shock and surprise to find out I had won a commission. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I couldn’t really say which part of the process I’m most looking forward to. I think the whole process should be rewarding.
Fay Roberts
Fay is a 34-year-old classically trained singer from Cardiff who started performing at the age of 4. She has been getting stuff published since the age of 18. She was bitten by the performance poetry bug in Spring 2006 after a favour to a friend turned into a place in the final of a poetry slam.
She co-manages a series of live poetry events (Poetry Kapow!) in Milton Keynes, performs in various parts of the Midlands and South East, and is part of a poetry collective calling themselves Bardcore. She gets excited by databases for a living.
Fay has been getting excited about putting ideas into writing and watching people’s reactions to them since she was about five years old. But then someone introduced her to science and computers and writing was sidelined, though never forgotten. Somehow she failed to notice she kept having short stories, articles and poems published sporadically between the ages of nine and twenty-three, that she kept starting epic novels, and planning others, even though she had always considered herself a scientist first and foremost.
Fay began to write songs up with songs; short verses to express the feelings that didn’t work in prose. Someone introduced her to haiku and she fell in love. She took part in a poetry slam as a favour to a friend, accidentally got through to the final round, was invited back for other events and, surrounded by other poets, started writing more. Three years later she’s more a poet than anything else.
Fay’s initial engagement with this project was from a friend’s idea that she thought sounded fun, but didn’t dream would come to anything.
Fay finds it hard to put into words why Write Way Up makes her so very excited without sounding clichéd and clumsy. It is, she says, quite simply, an opportunity like no other – to expand what she thinks of as poetry and performance, to learn from some incredibly talented artists and to push herself into scary places.
Natacha Bryan
Natacha Bryan is a writer and educator, based somewhere between outer space and Epping Forest. She has been commissioned to write about Charles Darwin to celebrate his bicentenary by the Wellcome Trust in
2007, and has performed at the Natural History Museum, the Roundhouse, and the Edge Arts Awards. She is a poet, storyteller and a creative writing workshop facilitator for young people. She has most recently been working on the SoundLife London installation as a facilitator encouraging the exploration of storytelling through sound. Her practice is inspired by the personal growth witnessed whilst working with young people involved in the creative process.
Natacha’s very first experience writing was in writing a letter a letter to “back home” on behalf of her grandmother to a man she had never seen, who lived in a place she had never been. On a more practical level, meeting poet Jacob Sam La Rose whilst working as an Educational Assistant on a poetry project at the Barbican, has helped Natacha get into the practice of writing, and develop teaching skills.
For Natacha, Write Way Up seemed like a good opportunity to focus her writing on a specific subject and to be part of a project where new creative ideas will arise from working with other writers.
David Eckersley
(Coming soon)
