Keeping this weird carvery metaphor going, sidle up with your hot plates for this selection of roasts and gravy in our final batch of Glasto poets for your delectation:
Jemima Foxtrot
Shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Spoken Word Fellowship 2015, Jemima performs extensively nationally and internationally including at the Barbican Main Hall, Latitude Festival, Galle Literary Festival & STANZA Poetry Festival. All Damn Day, Jemima’s first collection of poetry, was published by Burning Eye Books in September 2016.
Jemima has written many commissions including for the Tate Britain, the BBC, the Tate Modern and Latitude Festival. Her poetry film Mirror, commissioned by BBC Arts as part of their Women who Spit series, was available on iplayer for over a year. She has also appeared on Lynn Barber’s episode of Arts Night on BBC2 and on the Tate Modern: Switched on programme on BBC 2 in June 2016 with a poem especially written to celebrate the opening of the Tate Modern’s new wing.
Jemima’s debut poetry play Melody (co-written with and directed by Lucy Allan), won the spoken word award at Buxton Fringe Festival 2015 and was critically acclaimed at its run at the PBH Free Fringe at Edinburgh 2015, receiving several excellent reviews. Melody was runner-up in the Best Spoken Word Show category at the 2016 Saboteur Awards.
Jemima’s second poetry play Above the Mealy-mouthed Sea has received funding from Arts Council England, will show a full run at the Edinburgh Festival 2017 before touring nationally in Autumn/Winter 2017/2018. Jemima is also collaborating with experimental theatre veterans IOU to create a site-specific, outdoor poetry show, Rear View, which is touring in summers 2017 & 2018.
Jonny Fluffypunk
An economic refugee from the London hinterland, Jonny ‘does’ spoken words that fuse bittersweet autobiography, disillusionment and surreal whimsy in an act which has established him as a firm favourite at gigs, festivals, arts centres and housing benefit offices up and down the country. He has two books of writings- ‘The Sustainable Nihilists’ Handbook’ and the spanking new ‘Poundland Rimbaud’- both published by Burning Eye Books. Jonny’s solo no-fi stand-up spoken word show ‘Man Up, Jonny Fluffypunk- One Man’s Struggle with Late-Onset Responsibility’ spent 2015/16 touring around theatres, garden sheds, summer houses, empty shops and Britain’s other ad-hoc performance spaces in a blatant championing of homespun DIY culture. A new show, ‘How I Came To Be Where I Never Was,’ all about being the first punk in the village and other tiny epiphanies, is currently in development.
As well as all his own showing off, he also helps others show off, too; bringing obscure art to the masses as host of Stroud’s Mr Fluffypunk’s Penny Gaff and co-host of The Hip Yak Poetry Shack, the South West’s premier lo-fi pop-up poetry gig. Jonny also runs workshops anywhere and everywhere with anyone who’ll listen.
Maddie Godfrey
Maddie Godfrey is an Australian-bred performance poet and writer. She has been best described as “a poetry fireball”. Her work aims to facilitate compassionate conversations about social issues.
At age 21 Maddie has performed at The Sydney Opera House, The Royal Albert Hall and The Bowery Poetry Club. She was the 2015 poetry slam champion of Western Australia and has since won poetry slam competitions in London, Cambridge, Oxford and online. Earlier this year Maddie competed in The Women Of The World Poetry Slam in Dallas, Texas. She has also featured at Amnesty International UK and at a TEDx Women event.
Off stage, Maddie Godfrey has been published in literary journals,anthologies, magazines and on a poster at The University of Western Australia. Her work has also been used as an educational resource in an Australian high-school exam and a sexual violence workshop in Italy.
In January 2017 Maddie wrote, directed and performed her solo show “If My Body Was A Poem” at Perth Fringe Festival. To her credit, the show received sold out audiences and rave reviews. OUTinPerth magazine praised Maddie for “treating her language as a duvet she wraps around the audience, drawing them into a sanctuary of sorts”. Above all Maddie’s work is evocative, emotionally honest and entertaining. She is not a morning person. www.maddiegodfrey.com
Erin Fornoff – Official Blogger for Poetry&Words Stage
Dublin-based poet Erin Fornoff is a “story-telling poet” hailing from the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. She has performed her poetry at dozens of festivals and events including Electric Picnic, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Cuirt Festival, Glastonbury, and a national Irish tour with Hollie McNish. She has featured at Hozier and James Taylor concerts and collaborated with street artists, filmmakers, and musicians. Her poem ‘Thigh’ was included in Best New English and Irish Poets 2016 and her poem “To Make Things’ was commissioned by RTE for national broadcast and performance at Dublin Castle.
Her chapbook Folk Heroes was published by Stewed Rhubarb Press and her first collection will be published this autumn by Dedalus Press. She was part of Poetry Ireland Introductions 2014, won the Stanza Digital Slam in 2013, and her poems and stories have been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and featured on posters and curriculum nationwide for Ireland’s National Poetry Day. In 2015 she received an Arts Council bursary for her first novel Better People. She is co-founder and Programme director for Lingo, Ireland’s first ever spoken word festival. She is working on a large scale collaboration with poetry, film, and large scale street art focusing on addiction, mental health, and asylum seekers in Ireland.
Winston Plowes – Spoke-n-Word Walkabout Show
Based near Hebden Bridge in Calderdale Winston Plowes lives aboard his floating home with his cat ‘Fatty’. In the past year he has collaborated with The Arvon Foundation, the BBC, Glastonbury Festival, UCLAN and Manchester Museum and has recently tutored on courses and workshops for The Square Chapel, The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts and West Yorkshire Playhouse. As Poet in Residence for the Rochdale Canal Festival in 2012 and The Hebden Bridge Arts Festival for the past three years he has being lucky enough to share his community orientated poetry with a wider audience. As Judge for the Found Poetry Review and author of experimental work published in over 50 journals worldwide he gets the chance to play with our precious language and by providing workshops for schools hopes to continue to inspire through mutual creativity for many years to come. The jointly self-published Misery Begins at Home, 2010 and Micro Chap-book Extras, Origami Press, 2014 will soon be followed by his first collection of ghazals First of all I Wrote Your Name, Stairwell Books. Winston is also inventor of the world’s first (and possibly last) Random Poetry Generating Bicycle, the ‘Spoke-n-Word’.
Emily Harrison
Emily Harrison performs regularly in London and across the UK. She was recently awarded Best Spoken Word Performer 2016 at The Saboteur Awards. Emily has previously performed at Latitude, WOMAD and In The Woods Festival. Other performances include Tongue Fu, Bang Said The Gun, Stand Up and Spit and Hammer & Tongue Hackney and Oxford. “Astute and at times painfully humorous”, her first full-length collection with Burning Eye Books was released last year. Emily is currently working on a second collection, which she believes many of the men who have passed through her life will surely be thrilled to hear.
Roy Hutchins Reads Heathcote Williams
Roy Hutchins performs the comic verse of Heathcote Williams, accompanied on guitar by Dr Blue. 3 short poems that take a satirical look at dissent, surveillance and the cult of ancient and modern celebrity.
Scott Tyrrell
This Newcastle-based stand up poet has been writing and performing poetry and comedy since the turn of the century. An award-winning comedian as well as a national slam winning poet, he has performed his work around the UK, Europe and at many festivals including the Edinburgh Fringe, the Prague Fringe, WOMAD, Larmer Tree and Glastonbury – where he was Poetry Blogger in Residence in 2015. He has performed on ITV, BBC Arts, Sky Atlantic, Radio 4 and Radio 3’s Free Thinking festival.
He is author of two collections of Poetry; most recently, the warmly received ‘Grown Up’ published by Red Squirrel Press. His new collection is due out later this year published by Burning Eye Books.
Debris Stevenson
At secondary school 2002 – 2008 Debris was educated through the evolution of Grime and found poetry in the mouths of the testosterone and teenagers around her. Nurtured by the Roundhouse, Debris was then followed by Chanel4 for 2 years, published by organisations such as, Louis Vuitton, Oxford University, BBC Radio 4 and finally by Flipped Eye with her debut pamphlet, Pigeon Party.
A social carrier pigeon, Debris has performed her poetry from an ampitheatre in Kayamandi, South Africa to a classroom in Englewood, Chicago. Curve Theatre breakthrough Artist, Heatwave freestyle dancer and Mouthy Poet Founder, Debris has been awarded over £250,000 by Arts Council England to develop young talent in the East Midlands and beyond.
Debris can often be found dancing sober and alone to Grime, Soca or Dancehall but is mainly now focusing on her debut grime poetry show, Poet in da Corner.
Anabel Other’s Poetry Library (walkabout act)
The Bristol Art Library is a fully functioning public library housed in a wooden cabinet the size of a small suitcase. Annabel Other, the artist, created the library in 1998 and is the Head Librarian. The library’s volumes cover a wide range of subjects, from palaeontology to astronomy, with 250 books (all 5 in x 4 in) made by artists and practitioners from all areas of the arts and sciences. Membership of Bristol Art Library is free, and once you have joined and received your manilla reader’s ticket you may visit the library and peruse its volumes anywhere in the world. The library now has 12000 members, a gift shop and a friends’ organisation FOTBAL (Friends of The Bristol Art Library).
Poetry&Words at Glastonbury Festival 