Excite Exeter Poetry Update for September

For your delectation this month:
Liv Torc, wondermentalist, Radio 4 South West Slam winner and poet in residence for the Exeter Poetry Festival, launches her new book, 'Dancing Naked in Banana Land' at Otto Retro, next Thursday, 9th September. Doors open 7.30pm, for 8pm start. £7/6 conc all night, £5 from 9pm. Open mic 8-9pm. Liv performed for us to a packed out house in December and we're glad to have her back. A cracking night is guaranteed. If you've seen Liv perform you know I'm telling the truth, if you haven't you'll believe me next week.

Open mic spaces can be booked by replying to this email address, or on 07854598552. Please forward attached publicity to interested parties.


Budleigh Salterton Literature Festival is back for a second year, with Carol Ann Duffy as the headline guest, the weekend of the 24th of Spetember. A jam-packed Fringe is also planned for the Saturday (25th), including a cafe/bar style evening of poetry. Open mic spaces for this are limited and can be booked by contacting Hilary Ackland at hilaryackland@btinternet.com or on 01395 444406. Please see the attached publicity for further information.

Fringes are often the life-blood of festivals, so please show your support.
October sees the first ever Exeter Poetry Festival, see http://exeterpoetryfestival.wordpress.com/
 for the full line-up. The Otto, funky junk poetry night that month will be an open mic extravaganza! Free! with wine and nibbly things provided. Let's kick the festival off in style! Slots for the ExCite Festival Open Mic can be booked now, contact me on the email address above or on 07854598552. They will go quickly, so get typing.

Finally, some may have spotted our website http://www.rachelmccarthy.com/ is currently static. The website is being redeveloped, and should be available soon.

Poetry: Excite June Newsletter

Firstly, welcome to all new stanza members, and a sunny morning one and all,


Details of poetry events in June follow below, with flyers attached, so please forward to interested parties.

Open mic night at Exeter Cathedral, 4th June, 8.30pm -10.30pm, a fundraiser for a charity which provides emergency accommodation for young people with nowhere else to go. Open mic spots available, contact Katie Moudry at katiemoudry AT hotmail.com

Otto Retro open mic, Exeter, 10th June, 7.30pm, £4/£3 concs on the door - Another night of funky junk with generous helpings of wine and nibbles and yes, poetry. Give me a call or drop me an email to book a slot.

Carrie Etter @ The Paragon Gallery, Exeter, 17th June, 7.30pm, £5 /£3 on the door. We're very lucky to have Carrie come down and visit us. Carrie is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She has been widely published both in the US and UK, (Poetry Review, The New Republic, Stand, TLS, to hardly name a few). She'll be reading from both her pamphlet, The Son, from Oystercatcher Press and her first collection, The Tethers, from Seren, which the TLS hailed as 'one of the most ambitious and accomplished first collections in recent years.'
Not to be missed.

Open mic spaces available, but I warn thee now, they will go quickly...
Other interesting bits of news
Word of Mouth, A wee bit further out, but on the 5th June if you are in the Barnstable area there is a free afternoon of spoken word, poetry, performance and live music at Boston Tea Party, 1pm - 5pm.
The Poetry Society Stanza Competition is open now, the theme is 'Elsewhere', full rules below. If you are on the ExCite Poetry mailing list, i.e. received this email from stanza@rachelmccarthy.com you are eligible to enter.

http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/membership/stanzas/competition/2010rules/
I've been wittering in public about various things lately, which are now archived on the website (www.rachelmccarthy.com).
A look back over Carol Ann Duffy's first year as laureate:
http://www.rachelmccarthy.com/rachelmccarthy.com/One_going,_going,_gone.html
My Interview in Poetry News about what we do:
http://www.rachelmccarthy.com/rachelmccarthy.com/Poetry_News_Article.html
That's all for now folks, best
Rachel
--

Rachel McCarthy,

Poetry Society Representative for East Dev
email: stanza AT rachelmccarthy.com
website: http://www.rachelmccarthy.com/
 
Uncut Poets
 
The June event features guest poets
James Bell & Steve Spence
Please join us to say farewell to James who is retiring from his slot as co-host of Uncut, and also has a new collection to promote: Fishing for Beginners, published by Tall Lighthouse. Steve will read from his recently-published first collection, A Curious Shipwreck.

The event takes place on
Thursday 24 June, 7:30 pm, at
The Black Box
Media Centre
Exeter Phoenix
Gandy Street
Exeter
Box Office: 01392-667080

Tickets: £5 / £3 (concessions & open-mic readers)

Anyone wishing to book an open-mic slot may do so by calling James Bell on 07879-888319.

If you can't get hold of James, try me (Tony Frazer) on 07789-430485.

The next Uncut session will be on Thursday 29 July, our last session before the summer break, and will feature Lee Harwood as guest poet. Guests for the rest of the year are Kelvin Corcoran (September), Alice Kavounas (October) and Lawrence Sail (November).
Another date for your diaries: on 1 July, Uncut regulars Damian Furniss and Alasdair Paterson launch their new collections at the Devon and Exeter Institution, 7 The Close [i.e. on the Cathedral Green], Exeter EX1 1EZ. 7:30 for 8pm. Admission free.
 
The Language Club
 
Poetry in performance


7.30 – 10pm

Tickets £5 (£3 concessions)

Saturday 5 June

With guest poet Damian Furniss.Damian will be reading from his forthcoming book Chocolate Che. The poems in Chocolate Che were written in Cuba in the fiftieth year of the revolution; in India working with dying destitutes and recovering from tuberculosis; travelling up and down the spine of the Americas and into the heart of Europe on the trail of soldiers, artists and monks.

 
Shearsman Readings
 
Swedenborg Hall, Swedenborg House, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH. The entrance is through the portico on the right of the building shown above. There is no admission fee. Unless stated otherwise, all readings are hosted by Tony Frazer, publisher of Shearsman Books.
The next reading is as follows:

All events start at 7:30 pm.
Tuesday 7 June 2010

Damian Furniss & Martin Anderson


Exeter Poetry Festival

On Sunday 10 October, 3:00pm, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Damian Furniss and Jaime Robles read in a special Shearsman event at the first Exeter Poetry Festival, Exeter Central Library. Further details tbc, but, apart from the Shearsman reading, Jen Hadfield, Julia Copus and Greta Stoddart are all scheduled to read at the Festival. Follow news about the Festival here

Poetry Review: Liv Torc at Otto Retro

I like Lic Torc. She does what she does - sassy performance poetry, off by heart, acted not just recited - and she does it well. I'm not the only one who says so. She won the South-West final of the Radio 4 Slam, is one of Matt Harvey's Wondermentalist cabaret troupe, and is an indefatigable presence on the local spoken word scene.

I like her work, or rather I like her performing her work. I like the title of her book too - 'Take Your Monkey and Get Out of My Life' - which isn't to say I bought a copy. Truth is, I'd only read it to remind me of her bringing it to life on stage. That's the problem with performance poetry on the page - with an active local scene giving plenty of opportunities to check out its good - and not so good - practitioners, and youtube as a backup if I ever feel like a fix of the same, I reserve my reading hours for other stuff.

Which isn't to say I don't regard Liv as a poet, I do, her and some - though not all - of her tribe - Amazonian and otherwise. Several were up there with her at Otto Retro - Exeter's funky junk store, one of the several homes of East Devon's poetry Stanza, Excite. In a funny kind of way, the setting was like the inside of her mind - eclectic bric-a-brac you probably don't need, but find yourself being charmed by all the same.

Some had her pizazz and the ones that didn't, at least they had a go. I can listen to the worst of them for five minutes, once, on an open mic. By the third or fourth time my democratic instincts are being tested, but I don't begrudge anyone the opportunity. It's how wannabe poets test themselves against an audience, alongside other wannabes, the odd should've-been and the occasional real thing. It's like eating canapes - if you don't like what you've got, there's another one coming along to soak up your glass of wine.

And I kind of regret not buying a copy of that book for the title alone. It would have made a quirky present for one of my younger sisters or elder nieces. I might just have done that but then she was chaired as the Bard of Exeter, made to wear robes and take a vow after a long speech by the Grand Bard about what the recently interred tradition should mean to her and us. That sickle lacked a cutting edge. So I slipped out the door and rushed home to watch Larry David's 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' instead. And I'd advise performance poets with a comedic wit and sense of the ridiculous to do the same.