A Lovely Word Podcast

This month Becki and Alex are joined by Levi Tafari (https://www.levitafari.net), who is a local legend and urban griot, nationally and internationally recognised for his dub poetry style.

It's National Poetry Day tomorrow! Come and celebrate with us down in the Everyman Street Cafe from 8pm where we have Levi Tafari headlining and some of you lovely lot performing as well, if you want to. Also this month's podcast is now live! Featuring a lovely selection of poetry from our last spoken word night where we had the incredible Keisha Thompson headlining and a little bit of discussion on class, bees, polari, dementia and MATHS! Keisha Thompson is a Manchester based writer, performance artist and producer. She is currently touring award-winning solo show, Man on the Moon. Her debut book, Lunar, features her poetry in addition to the show script. She is also the Young People’s Producer at Contact, chair of radical arts funding body, Future Ventures’ Fund, is a member of Greater Manchester Cultural and Heritage Group. She has supported artists such as Kate Tempest, Hollie McNish, The Last Poets, Saul Williams, Amiri Baraka and has performed in Brave New Voices festivals 2008 & 2009. https://keishathompson.com/

Join Rachael, Becky and Alex as they discuss and navigate all thing poetry and suchlike. This month's headliner was the epicly hilarious Fat Roland who brought the most props ever seen at ALW. Catch him at Edinburgh Fringe 1 - 13 August: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/fat-roland-seven-inch We'll be taking a little break over the summer and will be back the first Thursday in September. Keep your eyes out for an EXCITING SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT COMING SOON!

Join Rachael, Becky and Alex as they discuss and navigate all thing poetry and suchlike. There's a new opportunity, for Merseyside people to be part of the 'A Lovely Word' Artist Development Programme. Join in! Also, isn't Ben Norris fantastic? A two time UK Slam winner, Ben's Pamphlet, Some Endings is out now. You can find out about that and more, here: https://bennorris.net/

This week it's a short podcast, as well, Alex forgot to record the poets. So it's all his fault. blame him. Anyway, there's some excellent chat, an interview with Louise Wallwein (MBE - if she doesn't mind me mentioning it...), and talk of Writing on the Wall's WOWfest in Liverpool, publicly funded funded institutions and the BBC.

As this month’s night fell so close to International Women’s Day, and the theme of this years day is #BalanceforBetter, we wanted to celebrate women poets in Liverpool by reserving half of the sign up slots on the night for women. The evening was presented by Alex Ferguson and this months excellent headliner was Carmina Masoliver! Carmina Masoliver is a writer from south London. She has been sharing her writing on the page and stage since 2006, with features across the UK at festivals such as Latitude, Bestival, and Lovebox, and events such as Bang Said the Gun. She is the founder of She Grrrowls – a night featuring women and non-binary people in the arts. In 2017, Burning Eye Books published an anthology of ten poets commissioned by Carmina, with thanks to funding from Ideas Tap. She is a member of the Burn After Reading community and is in a collective of poets called Kid Glove, born out of the Roundhouse programme and creators of ‘Dear Adventure’, performed as resident artists at the Roundhouse as part of the Last Word Festival. Carmina was long-listed for the Young Poet Laureate for London award in 2013 and was also the winner of that year’s Poetry Rivals competition. Most recently, she was longlisted for the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships in 2017. https://carminamasoliver.com/ Carmina Masoliver @Carminapoetry Get in touch if you have any questions - see you next month! Thursday 4 April!

This podcast we had many vignettes of quick (and crude in places) conversation, not always relating to poetry, but who’s counting!? Alex, Rebecca and Rachael played rap or poem, interviewing headliner Jasmine Gardosi, and talking a bit (as always), about the Liverpool arts scene. Footnotes (things talked about): Jasmine Gardosi: https://www.jasminegardosi.com/ Ugly Bucket Theatre: https://www.facebook.com/uglybuckettheatre/ Rupi Kaur: https://rupikaur.com/ Laura Dockrill: http://www.lauradockrill.co.uk/ TS Eliot: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

We are joined by Thick Richard (not his real name) on the night, and he unleashes his full force of poetry on us. We are again joined by Rachael, Alex and Rebecca for the podcast, discussing offensiveness in art, and guessing if lyrics are 'raps or poems'?

This month, Becky and Alex caught up with the charming Ciaran Hodgers, award winning poet currently on tour with his poetry book 'Cosmocartography'. We also talked to fool-in-residence Lewis Smith, about a poem from Lewis Hamilton, about Lady Di. Enjoy!