I’m reading twice in the coming week. Next Saturday I’ll be part of the London Magazine/Trespass event at the O2 Wireless festival, reading on a stage in Hyde Park – appropriately, at Speakers Corner – sometime between 4pm and 6pm. (Shame I’m not on the same day as Morrissey, after all that! Eh.)
The London Magazine will be there every day of the festival, by the way – and although the readings only go from 4-6pm, there will be entertainment of one sort or another throughout the day, so pop along to see what’s happening. Apparently it’s right near the beer, too.
The lineup on Saturday is:
Roddy Lumsden
Katy Evans-Bush
Tom Chivers
Aoife Mannix
Isobel Dixon
Paul Birtill
Maureen Jivani
Ruth O’Callaghan
Naomi Woodis
Before that, on Thursday the 3rd, I’m taking part in Roddy Lumsden’s 2008 Independence Day extravaganza, his Fifty States project. Last year – the prototype year – I read my then-new poem Forth in July. At Christmas he expanded on the idea and commissioned three sets of twelve poets to each write a poem on one of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and the resulting poem of mine – The Desert – is one of my good ones, I think. Colley birds. Currently in hand at, oh, I won’t say where, in case they hate it.
So this time, Roddy has commissioned fifty poets to write a poem each, about an allocated state. The logistics alone – two nights of readings, 25 poets per night, to say nothing of the 1st-2nd-3rd-choice allocation system – would slay many, but Roddy is after all a crossword puzzle artiste as well as a poet. And he does keep people to time.
I got West Virginia. I set myself the challenge of making no reference whatsoever to the two first words that spring to mind, nor any permutation thereof, nor to the song they are in, nor to the singer of that song, nor to anything that might even bring any of those things to mind. Like Colorado.
Details below. As you can see, I’m on last.
The 50 States Project
First reading: July 3rd at The Scooterworks Cafe, 132 Lower Marsh, London
Nearest tube: 2 mins from Lambeth North or 5 mins from Waterloo
50 poets have been commissioned by BroadCast to write new poems, one relating to each of the US states. 25 of them read at this event in the atmospheric Scooter Cafe; the other 25 will read at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon the following evening.
Starts 8pm sharp – £5 for non-readers
http://www.scooterworks-uk.com/#
Poets are:
Marianne Burton / John Citizen / Eloise Stonborough / Wayne Smith / Roddy Lumsden / David Floyd / Joe Dunthorne / Judy Brown / Annie Freud / Sinead Wilson / Retta Bowen / Derek Adams / Tim Cumming / Donna Bamford / Tim Wells / Imogen Robertson / Inua Ellams / Niall O’Sullivan /Julia Bird / Octavia Lamb / Ahren Warner / Sophie Richmond / Matthew Caley / Jacqueline Saphra / Katy Evans-Bush
