The WORD! Show on Panj Pani Radio, 7th July.
Wednesday the 7th July brought together Lyric Lounges band of volunteers for the second instalment of the WORD! show on panj pani radio. it will be broadcasting throughout July every wednesday, 12-2pm. The show was broadcast live and on schedule today and was manned this week by Lydia, Lauren, Kishan, Diviesh, Yvette, Zara, Saskia, Karen and Tara. Presented this week by Tara, the show kicked off with a full plan of events after a pre-meeting on Monday, beginning once more with a quick overview of Lyric Lounge and its events by Yvette.
Next the volunteers took turns in interviewing Lydia Towsey, Artistic Director of the festival, about what was on and how people could get involved, including a reading of one of Lydia’s own poems “Love Poem To A Polar Bear”. After the interview another song was played and then some Poetry readings brought from the volunteers who have either been involved in poetry workshops, or wrote their own poetry anyway. Saskia, who had never read or performed her own poetry before did a wonderful introduction and poem, Kishan recited perfectly a rap, Yvette and Diviesh then read from their own poetry collections. Lauren then went on to explain what ‘ Steam Punk ‘ was and how it was involved in lyric lounge, that is that Lyric lounge will be holding its own “Steam Punk Poetry Party” – quite a mouthful! She then proceeded to show in the only way possible what Steam Punk was than to play a song, by Dr Steel.
The latter half of the show was particually exciting as it showcased special guest, Mellow Baku, acclaimed lyricist and musician. Karen took the opportunity to grill Mellow on her music, lyrics and about her involvement with lyric lounge this year. She will be holding a “Blues lyrics workshop” during the Lounge and it all sounded extremely exciting. We heard a few tracks from her album, not to mention two live performances which amazed us all in the studio. A very talented woman. After Mellow had left a few more poetry readings and a discussion started by Lauren on what processes people went through when writing their poetry, as herself a lyricist and musician but not a poet. Yvette, Diviesh and myself all put across out points of view on the matter and Lauren explained abit about what she wrote herself. We ended this week’s show on information on Mark Gwynne Jones and The Psychicbread, and his poem – “Stop The Week”. On the Sunday of the lounge he will be running a workshop aimed at the relationship between words and music, and will be that evenings booked act for WORD! Itself. Another great show for the volunteers, roll on next weeks show!
By Tara Gatherer
