The London Word Festival is a pioneering, annual celebration of words, text and language; daring in its approach to cross-artform programming, commissioning new work and exploring non-traditional spaces. Although this festival started on the 1st March, it contines until 1st April with three more events to run (see below)
Established in 2007 and based in London’s vibrant East End, the Festival has featured a wide range of artists from the fields of music, literature, comedy, theatre and live art.
They have paired cult US slam poet Saul Williams with spoken word hip-hop duo dan le sac Vs Scroobius Pip; they’ve transformed a medieval tower in Hackney into a ghostly sound field with leftfield author Iain Sinclair; they’ve premiered Edward Larrikin’s first play in a Victorian music hall, instigated collaborative ballad printing in Stoke Newington, and conducted stand-up experiments in live blogging. Their 2009 commission Inua Ellams’ The 14th Tale won an Edinburgh Fringe First and transferred to the National Theatre in February 2010.
Founded by Tom Chivers, Sam Hawkins and Marie McPartlin on a shoe-string budget but with a lot of good will, in 2009 the Festival received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Breakthrough Award. We work out of a nineteenth-century workshop in Shoreditch with no running water and pigeons the size of small dogs.
From 2009: Phill Jupitus and Tim Wells
Iain Sinclair: Hackney Ascension Day
Events
Sun 28 Mar
LEAFCUTTER JOHN: BRIGGFLATTS REWIRED
+ Peter Finch
+ MacGillivray
+ Hannah Silva
Stoke Newington International Airport | £6.50 adv / £8 door | 7pm
“Brag, sweet tenor bull…”
Intrepidly inventive folk, jazz and electronic musical inventor Leafcutter John decodes epic Modernist poem Briggflatts for the digital century in a brand new commission.
Briggflatts Rewired takes Basil Bunting’s extraordinary and intensely musical poem as the starting point for a new, electronically-enhanced composition. In an event that explores the interplay between sound, voice […]
Wed 31 Mar
THE ART OF STORYTELLING
Terry Saunders’ ‘Six and a Half Loves’
+ Matthew Robins
+ The Chip Shop Poem by Ian McMillan with the Henningham Family Press
+ The Tree of Lost Things
+ more tbc
St Leonard’s Church | £8 adv, £10 door | 8pm
They say the art of the story is in the telling. But a little help from friends never went amiss. A coterie of skilled and award-winning yarn-spinners augment their narratives with puppets, cartoons, gift-tags from the audience and a live printing press.
Critically acclaimed comedian, storyteller and hopeless romantic Terry Saunders premieres his brand new Six […]
Thu 1 Apr
PLAY ON WORDS
John Hegley
+ Found in Translation
+ Barbican Young Poets
Barbican Art Gallery | FREE | 7pm
We help celebrate another side of legendary London architect and visionary artist Ron Arad. For the industrial design maverick, inventor of the SMS displaying Swarovski Crystal chandelier, is also a word fanatic. In this special event in conjunction with Barbican Art Gallery’s retrospective, eccentric comic wordsmith John Hegley performs a selection of poems inspired by […]
Links: London Word Festival