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Preview: London Word Festival

The fourth annual London Word Festival kicks off in April 2011, featuring an eclectic mix of poetry, spoken word, music, theatre and art, as well as strands devoted to Libraries & Public Reading, and Text & Technology. The bumper programme explores such manifold subjects as robotics, cigarettes vs. books, ladies wrestling men, financial murder mystery, striptease and the King James Bible!

Kicking off this year's activities on 9th and 10th April is poet Hannah Jane Walker's THIS IS JUST TO SAY, a unique theatrical experience for a small audience. Gathered around a dinner table, you will share experiences of the word 'Sorry' and all its connotations, from the insincere to the genuine, the casual pardons to the wrenching heartache that can come from those apologies we wish we had made or received, but never did.

One of the aims of the festival is to team up spoken word artists with performers from other artforms. This year we're really lucky to have musician Emmy the Great and Faber New Poet Jack Underwood collaborating together on THE GOODBYE LIBRARY on 27th April. Inspired by the Dewey Decimal system, this night will fuse song, poems and multimedia to create a poignant, bitter-sweet lament for the library. Guest contributions come from Elizabeth Sankey from Summer Camp, Miriam Elia and poet and novelist Joe Dunthorne, and the audience will be asked to bring along a book to contribute as well.

Poet Ross Sutherland will also be exploring the theme of collaboration with his piece Every Rendition on a Broken Machine, a spoken documentary that mixes film and lecture to examine the ways in which writers affect and are affected by machines in their work. Partly inspired by J.G. Ballard's vision of the ‘automatic poetry machine', Ross will investigate how the creative partnership between text and tech might affect the autonomy of the writer. Every Rendition is part of MAN/MACHINE on April 19th, and is presented alongside musical and spoken word performances on the theme of robotics, automation and technology.

More collaborations, this time between poets, performers and strippers, will be happening during PRIVATE VIEW on 18th April. One highlight will be poet Hannah Silva's Sushi, in which she will combine her thrillingly distinctive vocal acrobatics with pole dancing. Yes, really. The piece is inspired by women involved in the sex industry, is set against the soundscapes of Plymouth's night-life, and should surprise, inspire and excite in equal measures.

Strange organic forms of literary science and textual innovations are on the bill on May 3rd as we present a rare appearance of cult experimental Canadian poet CHRISTIAN BÖK. Christian's best-selling Oulipian masterpiece Eunoia took seven years to complete and features five chapters all written utilising only one vowel. Since then, he's invented languages for science fiction television, and even tried to encode poetry into DNA strands. Bök is joined by poet Luke Kennard, writer and critic Maria Fusco and more.


For the full programme and to book tickets: www.londonwordfestival.com