The WORD! Show on Panj Pani Radio, 14th July.
Wednesday, 12pm, and the regular crowd of volunteers have arrived at Panj Pani Radio’s studio for our third instalment of the WORD! Show, to speak all things lyric lounge and poetry related. Today being no different we had a fully packed show, with two interviews, a wide selection of music (including a live performance) and many discussions. Not to mention the newly printed and extremely impressive lyric lounge programs! now printed and available to pick up around Leicester, especially new walk museum where the event is to be held.
The show begun with a brief introduction to the show and the lyric lounge, then we went on to discuss in more detail about Saturdays volunteers meetings. There are four volunteer groups in total, the events and promo’s team, the theatrical happenings group, tech group and poetry group. the latter two still to meet. As many of the volunteers on the radio show had attended these meetings we got a deep over view of all that happened last weekend. Diviesh and Kishan spoke about some of the wondrous and exciting ideas thrown around during the theatrical happenings group, then about the events and promos team meeting which took place straight after. During this the members were encouraged to revise a certain section of the program in groups and then feed back to everyone about what’s included. Kishan’s group particularly standing out because of the hilarious way it was brought back to the group in the form of a news report. after a short musical interlude Karen went on to interview our first guest, dance artist and workshop facilitator Louise Katerega, as with every interview Karen had extensively researched Louise and came up with some fantastic questions and Louise went into great detail about how you can get involved with her particular workshop at the lyric lounge. She then went on to choose two songs to play and Karen finished her interview with many thanks to her for coming down.
The next section showcased more brilliant poetry readings from poet’s in residence Diviesh, Kishan, Nathan and Zara. Zara, who had never performed one of her poems before went on to explain how she had written this particular piece over 10 years ago and said it felt strange to read it after such a long time, but found it cathartic. Diviesh and Kishan performed with their usual high standard of work, and Nathan went on to explain a little about his involvement in lyric lounge with his group of poets ’ The Decadent Romantics ‘. He explained that each different in their style, brought together to make one whole group of diverse material. He finished on a poem which told the tale of how struggling at university, finding WORD! and meeting other like minded people had given him the confidence and encouragement to carry on writing his poetry in his own fashion, rather to conform to the usual stereotypes poets are labelled with.
After another interlude of music, Karen took it upon herself to interview composer Dave Dhonau, who has been involved with showcase live and lyric lounge for a while now. she probed him on his music and inspirations followed by a great live performance by him and his Cello. followed by some more song choices we thanked Dave for coming to the show and then went on to discuss further about showcase live and its involvement within lyric lounge as it is mentored by the wonder that is Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Kishan and Lydia spoke in depth about this. This then led on to a discussion on the pro’s and cons of mixing poetry with other art forms, such as dance and music. After a good 10-15 minutes we decided there were no bad points to this, as if the piece of work is strong enough to hold on its own then why not add dance or music to it as this could improve an already decent piece of work.
Finally we discussed the brochure, where you can pick one up, how to book onto workshops and that we will be live on air again next week, on http://panjpaniradio.co.uk/ between 12pm-2pm every Wednesday up until lyric lounge. more information, including an in-depth look at the events and happenings can be found at www.lyriclounge.co.uk. Congratulations once again to the volunteers who took part in this weeks radio show.
By Tara Gatherer
