Posts Tagged ‘poetryimprovisation’

zqNews Jan 2015: Texas 2 London, Death on the Road, and Word’s a Stage

Friday, February 6th, 2015

In this issue of zqNews, find out about my forthcoming video link between Texas and London, new audio tracks from Poems from the Road, and poetry improvisation projects in the pipeline for London and St Andrews.

Poems from the Road

Poems from the RoadI’ve uploaded two new tracks to my Poems from the Road SoundCloud playlist. There’s a fascinating interview I conducted with London Grip editor Michael Bartholomew-Biggs about poet-cum-cricketing commentator John Arlott’s pamphlet-length poem ‘Death on the Road’, and ‘Travelling the Roads in My Red Mini’, a poem by Ann Vaughan-Williams exploring the voices that accumulated in her car during her time as a psychiatric social worker

The Poems from the Road podcast is now available on the Apples and Snakes SoundCloud page, so if you missed it in December, you can now listen to it at your leisure. And the additional materials that I wasn’t able to include in the podcast are up on my SoundCloud page until the end of February. Check out the Poems from the Road webpage.

I’m also planning to submit a 10-minute Poems from the Road feature to Radio Wildfire, so if you’ve any favourite poems from the show or additional material, let me know and I’ll consider them for the feature.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the show!

Texas 2 London

Skype Me! Sheffield and the WorldOn 10th April the Austin International Poetry Festival (AIPF) is coming to London with Texas 2 London at the Colour House Theatre, Merton Abbey Mills. AIPF is renowned as a melting pot of world poetry, and our three guests will be trading poems with poets in Austin via a live video link. On our side we’ve got Matt Black, Agnes Meadows, and Kayo Chingonyi, and on the Texas side there’ll be Element615 plus two more to be confirmed.

Take part!
There’ll also be a chance for you to perform your work at the AIPF. At 7pm we’ll have an open mic (offline), and three participants from the open mic will then be offered a short slot during the video-linked part of the evening.

I’m co-hosting with electro-pop poetry duo Project Adorno, and the hosts on the other side of the Atlantic will be the irrepressible and always surprising Thom the World Poet and James Jacobs. I’m collaborating with OpenHaus Arts on producing Texas 2 London, and it’s supported by an Arts Development Fund grant from Merton Council.

Friday 10 April 2015, 7–10pm
Colour House Theatre, Merton Abbey Mills, SW19 2RD (near Colliers Wood underground)
£3 on the door. Enquiries to 020 3730 8039.
More info: http://zeroquality.net/texas2london.html

Poetry Improvisation

Poetry ImprovisationMy December workshop at the Scottish Writers’ Centre in Glasgow got a great write-up, and I have several poetry improvisation projects coming up in the next couple of months.

I’m particularly excited about an Apples and Snakes project called Word’s a Stage that’s starting this Saturday. I’ll be leading a series of four workshops with four emerging writers to develop a performance for early April (exact date TBA). We’ll be using improvisation techniques to generate material and the final performance will be at least part improvised on the night.

This is a valuable opportunity to explore what we can do with poetry improvisation when working with a group over a sustained period of time. I’ve got some ideas about feeding off the audience (so the audience become part of the poetry), chorus work, and layered set pieces with background and foreground voices, but in the end it’s down to the individuals in the group to see how they interact and what we come up with.

Leaving the Comfort Zone
I’m also offering a poetry improvisation workshop at Scotland’s Stanza poetry festival in St Andrew’s on Saturday 7 March. This will be a day-long workshop during which we’ll devise material for a short performance at the end of it. I believe there are a couple of places left, so still time to book.

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Poetry Improvisation Workshop – Nottingham 26 July

Monday, July 14th, 2014

I’ll be running a poetry improvisation workshop at Nottingham Writers’ Studio from 10am to around 5pm on Saturday 26 July 2014.

The session uses group improvisation to explore ways of working together to create spontaneously. The session will include games, structured scenarios where we work with different poetic voices, and freeform improvisation that can take off in any direction. Some of the things I’ve done in improv sessions in the past include creating a human-generated Apostrophe poem, speaking in endangered languages, and producing a piece based on Snapchat.

If you’re used to writing poetry on your own with a keyboard or pen, this is going to be something completely different – it’s oral, collaborative, and spontaneous.

Poetry improvisation can be a great way to channel your inner voice, explore the possibilities of working with others, and build confidence in your spontaneity. It can also be used to generate pieces for performance or recording, and as a method for producing ideas for further development.

The cost is £75 or £50 (NWS members), which includes tea/coffee and biscuits, and there’ll be a one-hour lunch break (lunch not included).

Further details and booking info are available on the Nottingham Writers’ Studio website:
http://nottinghamwritersstudio.co.uk/event/group-poetry-improvisation-workshop-robin-vaughan-williams/


More about my workshops: http://www.zeroquality.net/zqme/workshops.html