Celebrate National Poetry Day with a day of workshops and performances at Blackpool’s literature festival Wordpool. 

Wordpool has a whole week of fantastic events from Saturday 2nd to Friday 8th October, including a National Poetry Day event - Café Culture – hosted by the Lancashire Writing Hub on Thursday October 7th at the No 5 Café, Cedar Square, Blackpool 1pm – 8pm.

Café Culture will involve an on-line link up with cafes around the world, and drop in workshops and performances with They Eat Culture, poets Marvin Cheeseman, Rachel McGladdery, and Annie Clarkson, and a Word Soup at Café Culture special.

Starting at 1pm, you’ll be able to join poetry and flash writing workshops, catch digital readings of poetry throughout the day, and between 6 & 8pm there will be a Wordpool Special Word Soup where you can try your new work out at the poetry Open Mic and catch some great regional poetry talent in the form of Rachel McGladdery, Annie Clarkson, and Marvin Cheeseman.

Workshops will be running between 1pm & 6pm with the Lancashire Writing Hub, getting your work up and running with some writing exercises for flash poetry and prose. The evening’s performers will be providing drop-in sessions on ideas, poetry writing, performance and writing to slam. Come along at any time, get your ideas moving and those poems onto paper, and practice your performance techniques. 

Also between 1pm & 6pm we’ll be screening digital performances from poets across the county (and maybe across the world) both as live linkups and recorded performances.

And between 6pm & 8pm, there’ll be a Wordpool Special Word Soup. We’ll be presenting a handful of carefully selected poetry adaptations into film, thanks to Version Film Festival. Poetry performers who want to showcase their own work will be able to stand up and conquer the open mic, hosted by Lancashire Writing Hub’s Jane Brunning.

Poetry performances come from three of the best North-West poets. Rachel McGladdery, a rising star on the North-West performance trail, will read her intimate, confessional style poetry. Rachel’s had a busy first year as a poet, with appearances at several live literature venues around the North West, a recent interview with Radio Lancashire, and winning of the NXNW 2010 Poetry Slam. She has had poems published online at The Pygmy Giant (‘Dad’, ‘Spring Cleaning’ and ‘The Greenhouse’), in Preston Is My Paris Zine literary edition (‘Brief Encounter’), Mental Virus Arts magazine ( ‘Dad’ ) and ‘Little Clock’ in the Word Soup, Year One anthology.

Annie Clarkson is a poet, social worker and short story writer living in Manchester. Her collection of prose poems Winter Hands was published by Shadowtrain Books in 2007. Her stories and prose poems have been widely published online and in anthologies and magazines. She blogs at www.forgettingthetime.blogspot.com. Her writing is composed from ‘tenderness, sexuality and courage, exploring taboo places in the human psyche. That she does so and does so fearlessly is a testament to her compassion and understanding of the everyday fears and uncertainties we experience as humans.’ (Geraldine Green)

Marvin Cheeseman made his debut as a comedy performance poet in 1998 at Manchester’s Frog and Bucket comedy club. The following year, after winning several poetry “slams”, he was featured in the Manchester Poetry Festival. The year 2000 saw the release of his first poetry collection “Full Metal Jacket Potato” published by The Bad Press. He has published a limerick collection entitled “Making Prawn Sandwiches for Roy Keane”. A new book, “We Hate It When Our Ex-Lodgers Become Successful” was published in 2009. Over the last five years Marvin’s work has featured on BBC Radio 1, 2 and 4 and he appeared on the BBC television poetry series “Whine Gums.” His website can be found at www.marvincheeseman.com

The day-long event offers a great opportunity to generate writing ideas, start getting your scribbles down on paper, mould your ideas into poetry and to practice slamming and performing, getting tips from the poetry specialists themselves, before perhaps taking to the mic yourself. And if you’re not a writer, then sit back and enjoy some Café Culture with a cup of tea watching a host of digital performances and a selection of some great North West live poets for Word Soup.

Keep up with event news on the Lancashire Writing Hub – www.lancashirewritinghub.co.uk

Café Culture – October 7^th  1pm – 8pm

Number 5 Café, Cedar Square, Blackpool FY1 1

Digital

1pm – 6pm – on and off digital screenings of poetry including live linkups and recorded performances

Workshops

1-3pm LWH writing exercises – flash poetry & prose

3-4pm Marvin Cheeseman – Poetry Workshop

4-5pm Marvin Cheeseman – Performance Drop In

5-5.30pm Rachel McGladdery – Writing for Slam Exercise

5.30pm-6pm Annie Clarkson – Ideas Exercise

Performance

6pm – 8pm

With… Poetry film adaptations from Version film festival, Open Mic, Rachel McGladdery, Annie Clarkson, Marvin Cheeseman

To contact us about the Wordpool Café Culture event, please email writing@theyeatculture.org

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