Ramsey Campbell @ Fright Night Pictures

Pictures of Ramsey Campbell at Leicester Fright Night, Thursday 22nd March 2007. Fortunately the prophecy of the library demon did not come to pass.

Tripod Podcast Episode Two

Continuing to bring you the liveliest and best spoken-word work from the Three Cities, this episode features performances from Leicester’s monthly open-mic night, Word.

Performers featured are:

Steve Rooney
Victor Richards
Sure Shot
Lydia Djani
Lorna Meehan
Dreadlockalien

Let us know what you think!

Word is Leicester’s premier open floor spoken word event. It runs on the first Wednesday of each month at Bambu café bar, and features a fantastic guest artist as well as open floor spots.

Bookings - (T) 07870 608875, (E) steve@applesandsnakes.org
Visit - Apples & Snakes

Word Up!

A new spoken word night, ‘Word Up!’ starts at leicester University in march 2007. It will be held in the Element bar (the bar will be open) in the students union building from 8.00-12.00. People are free to come along on the night if they wish to perform any kind of spoken word: poetry, rapping, singing. There will also be a guitar available as well as DJ’s slots throughout the evening.

Tickets are only £2.00 in advance and can be reserved by emailing: lad15@le.ac.uk
People just need to leave their full name. Tickets are £2.50 on the door with a student card and £3.00 standard.

WORD with Rob Gee

Apples & Snakes presents
WORD
@ Bambu, 21 Welford Road, Leicester, LE2 7AD
Wednesday 7th March 2007
 From 8pm
FREE

Guest artist
Rob Gee

Word is back for March with Leicester’s very own Rob Gee. Performance poet, comic, workshop leader and reformed psychiatric nurse, Rob combines elements of theatre, comedy and literature in his poetry. From diabolical chat up lines to the end of the world, he insists the human tragedy is a gleeful comedy. Fast, furious and very funny, Rob uses inventive wordplay, whiplash couplets and motored rhythm to tap into the world of chaos and adventure that lurks behind the veneer of everyday life.

Steve Carroll
East Midlands Regional Co-ordinator
Apples & Snakes
07870 608875
steve@applesandsnakes.org
www.applesandsnakes.org

Also this month:

Apples & Snakes presents
Sprung
Featuring Mark Gwynne Jones and Michelle Hubbard
Now that spring has sprung, why not clean out the cobwebs with an
evening of the finest performance poetry? Apples & Snakes presents
two of the East Midlands’ top poets in two brand new venues.

@ The Old Library, Leeming Street, Mansfield, NG18 1NG
in partnership with Nottinghamshire Libraries
Saturday 17th March 2007
7.30pm
£4/£3 concessions

@ Perspective, 5 Saltergate, Lincoln, LN2 1DH
in partnership with the Spoken Word Campaign
Wednesday 28th March 2007
8.30pm
£4/£3 concessions

Bob Stein

13th March, 5pm
De Montfort University, IOCT
FREE

For the past several hundred years intellectual discourse has been shaped by the rhythms and hierarchies inherent in the nature of print. As discourse shifts from page to screen, and more significantly to a networked environment, the old definitions and relations are undergoing unimagined changes. The shift in our world view from individual to network holds the promise of a radical reconfiguraton in culture. Notions of authority are being challenged. The roles of author and reader are morphing and blurring. Publishing, methods of distribution, peer review and copyright - every crucial aspect of the way we move ideas around - is up for grabs. The new digital technologies afford vastly different outcomes ranging from oppressive to liberating. How we make this shift has critical long term implications for human society.

Robert Stein is the Director of the Institute for the Future of the Book. The institute, based at the University of Southern California has two principal activities. one is building high-end tools for making rich media electronic documents (part of the Mellon Foundation’s higher-ed digital infrastructure initiative) and the other is exploring and hopefully influencing the evolution of new forms of intellectual expression and discourse. Previously Stein was the founder of The Voyager Company where over a 13-year period he led the development of over 300 titles in The Criterion Collection, a series of definitive films on videodisc, and more than 75 CD ROM titles including the CD Companion to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Who Built America, and the Voyager edition of Macbeth.

This seminar is organised by the Production and Research in Transliteracy (PART) group at De Montfort University. The event is free and open to the public.

School Poetry Slams Come To Leicester

Performance poets from the East and West midlands are joining forces with Leicester Libraries to bring poetry to the young people of Leicester, slam style!

Poetry slams are an international phenomenon that have re-energised people all over the world with a new enthusiasm for performance poetry and spoken word. In a slam poets compete one against the other to win the audiences vote, using elements of hip hop, theatre, comedy and literature.

Established by new October Poets Richard ‘Dreadlockalien’ Grant and Giovanni ‘Spoz’ Esposito, the poetry slam project runs in over 80 schools in Birmingham and across the West Midlands helping thousands of young people to develop literacy, teamwork and performance skills. And now the project is coming to Leicester!

Local poets Rob Gee and Lorna Meehan join Dreadlockalien and Spoz to run three introductory slam days at Leicester schools (Crown Hills, Rusheymead and Rusheymead Primary) in March and April. Each day will allow up to 120 young people to get a taste of poetry slamming. Slam days in more schools are also in the pipeline.

The East Midlands Poetry Slam project aims to culminate with a regional final, from which teams of young people from local schools will compete to find the best young poets in the region.

For more information about the East Midlands Poetry Slams project or to book a slam day for your school please contact:

Lorna Meehan; Poet/Project Administrator
lorna_meehan@yahoo.co.uk
01162547306
07765413753

Giovanni Esposito; Poet/West Midlands Project Co-ordinator
spoz4@blueyonder.co.uk
01214533093

—————————————

ROB GEE
Rob has performed over 1500 shows, toured internationally and shared bills with Harold Pinter, Tony Benn, Jo Brand and Jimmy Carr. He has been commissioned to write poetry for Leicester City Football Club and BBC Radio, and won several slams. Festival appearances include the Glastonbury and Edinburgh Festivals, Cheltenham and Hay-on-Wye Literature Festivals, Sydney International Poetry Festival, The Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and Austin International Poetry Festival. He has led workshops for Creative Partnerships, Leicester Comedy Festival, Spark Children’s Festival, The National Association of Writers in Education and numerous City/County Councils throughout the UK. www.robgee.co.uk

LORNA MEEHAN
A freelance actress and Performance Poet, Lorna has an M.A from De Montfort University and has performed and worked with various theatre companies and arts organisations. She has run both drama and poetry workshops in various schools in Leicester and in Birmingham with Dreadlockalien Productions and has recently joined Kiss My Face Theatre Company. Her own unashamedly neurotic poetry contrasts with the dark procrastinations of her alter ego Melinda Deathgoth. She’s committed to engaging young people in poetry and has recently finished a seven week literacy project at a secondary school in Nottingham . www.ravingbansheepoetry.com

RICHARD GRANT and GIOVANNI ESPOSITO
The founders of the original West Midlands schools project, Dreadlock Alien (Director of The New October Poets) and Spoz (Birmingham’s current Poet Laureate) have performed everywhere from Poland to Glastonbury and are consistently in demand working with schools all over the West Midlands, however, one or the other could well end up in your workshop with their distinctively different styles of dub rap and humorously bad rhymes. http:members.lycos.co.uk/richardgrant www.spoz.net

Derby Live Words

The amazing Alex Davis, LDO for Derby and organiser of the Alt.Fiction festival launches Live Words, a new site publicising live literature in Derby and surrounds this week. Find all the details here

Book of the Year Award Longlist

The shortlist for the Leicester Book of the Year Award for Teenage Fiction 2007 is announced this week. The award is organised by Leicester Libraries and is now in its 6th year. Previous winners include Bali Rai (2002, 2004), Alan Gibbons (2003), Benjamin Zephaniah (2005) and Sherry Ashworth (2006). Young people from twelve Leicester city secondary schools gathered on 21st February at New Walk Museum to select the five shortlisted books. Hundreds of books were submitted for consideration by major UK publishers but only five could make it onto the shortlist. The shortlist as selected by the young people of Leicester is:

- Close-Up by Sherry Ashworth

- Damage by Sue Mayfield

- Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel

- The Outlaw Varjak Paw by S F Said / Dave McKean

- Uglies by Scott Westerfield

Voting for the award opens in schools around the city in mid-March. More information can be found at the award website: www.teenagefiction.wordpress.com

Tripod Magazine Issue One

Tripod is the magazine of new writing for the three cities of Leicester, Nottingham and Derby. Issue one of Tripod launches today with a fantastic line-up including interviews with literary superstars Iain M Banks and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, new short stories from Drew Gummerson and Nichola Monaghan and of course listings of all the best live literature happenings around the Three Cities.

And because literature doesn’t only exist on the page neither does Tripod. You can listen to the best in spoken word performances from the three cities by subscribing to the Tripod podcast – www.tripodpodcast.com

Writing School Leicester

Writing School Leicester’s new programme for summer is available from early March. It contains a sparkling range of courses aimed at writers at every stage in their development and runs from April to mid-August. For a brochure, call in at Leicester Adult Education College on Wellington Street, tel 0116 233 4343, or email Val Moore on vm1@laec.ac.uk