Performance Poetry: Caroline Bird & Ross Sutherland, Guest John Hegley

Performance Poetry: Caroline Bird & Ross Sutherland, Guest John Hegley

Date/Time
Date(s) - Mon 23rd Sep - Sat 28th Sep, 2019
All Day

Location
Moniack Mhor, Kiltarlity, Inverness-shire , IV4 7HT


Performance as Investigation

How do we keep our words alive in our mouths? Write like we talk and yet still retain mystery and complexity? Can we reimagine our poems as immersive art installations with infinite budgets? Reignite an old poem with current emotion? Write a new poem in an entirely fresh voice? This week will introduce a dizzying variety of techniques to help poets keep their words alive and surprising. Expect to write an almost criminal amount of new poems as well.

Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. She has five collections of poetry published by Carcanet. Her most recent collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. A twotime winner of the Foyles Young Poets Award, she published her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes (2002) when she was 15. She won a major Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize (2001) and twice for the Dylan Thomas Prize (2008 and 2010). She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics.

Ross Sutherland was born in Edinburgh. He has four collections of poetry. His latest is Emergency Window (Penned in the Margins). His poetry play Stand By for Tape Back-Up was shortlisted for the 2015 Art Foundation Prize for Spoken Word. The film adaptation won the Grand Jury prize for Experimental Film at BAFICI. In 2017, he made the 30-minute poetry film Missing Episode for BBC2. It was also screened at MoMI as part of their 2018 First Look season.
He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts, and produces the monthly new writing podcast Imaginary Advice (Best Fiction Podcast; 2018 British Podcast Awards.)

John Hegley. (Auto)biographically it might be said that I have been performing verse, since I stood in the playground at about 8 years old reciting couplets about t.v. programmes, I had heard, I had I cannot recall where. I have also sung, spoken and gesticulated in school halls, 30 Edinburgh Fringes and at a womens’ prison in Medillin, Columbia. Contributions from the audience are crucial to the performances. I would tend not to use the phrase ‘audience participation’ as this tends to be something decorative rather than integral. Adrian Mitchell very kindly said, ‘just because he is one of the funniest men alive, don’t underestimate his dedicated gentleness.’
Photo of John by Travis Elborough

 

Hannah Silva is unable to attend as guest.


Bookings

This course is now fully booked. Please contact us on info@moniackmhor.org.uk or 01463 741 675 to be added to the waiting list.


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