I'll be reading a few of my poems at this fantastic event (12th November).
LIPS: THE LONDON INTERNATIONAL POETRY AND SONG FESTIVAL
10th – 12th November 2007
THE MARQUEE CLUB (Just off Leicester Square, 14 Upper Saint Martins Lane, WC2H 9EF)
World class talent from all over the planet – a beat happening unlike any other.
LIPS was formed in July 2000, in response to a request from the directors of the first New York Underground Music and Poetry Festival (Nov. 2000), and of other previous festivals of verse and song, to the poet and writer Richard Deakin to originate a London version of the ongoing series of Festivals that had hitherto encompassed various European countries and the USA.
Richard began getting invited to these festivals to perform his poetry and plays after ANGELS STILL FALLING, his bio-play about Jack Kerouac (now being developed as a feature film) was favourably reviewed around the world. Most of these festivals involved David Amram, legendary classical composer, jazz and world musician, who actually introduced the jazz-poetry format to New York playing with his friend Jack Kerouac in 1957. As part of the LIPS festival David will be discussing his experiences with Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, on and off the road, with Carolyn Cassady, Neal's longsuffering wife and perhaps the love of Jack's life, tales of the Tradition being handed down by two "Soul Survivors" of the Beat Generation.
All these festivals have had a common theme and a thread running through them, contemporary performance poetry with a musical background within a Beat heritage. LIPS thought it was time they brought the formula, appropriately modified and reborn, to London, so that the poets and musicians involved could reach London audiences and wail with their fellow spoken word and musical artists in a cross-fertilization of the cultures and countercultures involved - and do it for the first time in the coolest city on Earth. LIPS will make London the focal point of an artistic collision between a core of major international artists and a small army of young pretenders to the thrones of poetry and song.
We are now reviving the festival at the legendary MARQUEE CLUB, birthplace of British rock, where among many others Jimi Hendrix played his first British gig…