Last week’s gigs involved a lot of weather – there was the snowstorm as we headed back from Bishop’s Castle on Wednesday evening, then Saturday’s monsoon rains as we drove to Kendal – as well as appreciative audiences, excellent open mic poetry, and a goodly number of book sales.
I also had the privilege of watching the first ever public performance of Emma Purshouse’s one-woman show It’s Honorary, Bab in the delightful Heron Theatre in Beetham, Cumbria. It was stupendous. It was amazing. It was a show you should crawl over broken glass to see [note: that’s a metaphor – please don’t]. Lucky people in or near Wolverhampton will be able to enjoy a broken-glass-free performance of the show in the city’s Arena Theatre on April 16th, when there are two excellent shows on the same bill – Dave Pitt (the other pandemonialist) will be sharing his superb show A Battered Chip On My Shoulder too, and it’ll be a night to remember. For all the right reasons. Get your tickets for that here.
I shall be sitting in the audience that night, while my colleagues smash it out of the park, and I’m looking forward to it immensely. Before then, I’ll be running an online poetry workshop about the art of writing political poetry. That’s this Sunday, March 1st, at 11am. It’s a PAYF event, and all money raised will go to the charity Freedom from Torture, who do vitally important work. If you’d like to come along, drop me a line, and I’ll add you to the list. Writing those words is also a reminder to me to make sure I’ve fettled the workshop suitably, and I shall head off to do that now.
No rest for the wicked. Or poets, apparently. So it goes.