The penultimate show for lyric lounge took place last Wednesday. The usual dedicated group of volunteers made their way to Panj Pani radio station for another great instalment of the WORD! show. This weeks theme was community and featured guest’s poet; Bobba Cass, and Writer and member of the Literature Network, Damien Walter.

The show began as normal with a brief introduction to WORD! and the lyric lounge events, where Lydia Towsey went on to discuss in detail about WORD! as a community and how she felt it affects its members and the organisation itself. This lead on to Bobba, a fellow WORD! Attendee for many years, speaking about his experiences of WORD!, communities he has worked in and about his involvement with a dance workshop at the lounge. Next we each spoke about our own experiences of volunteering, with the lyric lounge and in other areas. Lauren Furze, Solo musician and extreme volunteer, spoke extensively about how lyric lounge was the best thing she had ever got involved in, not only in meeting new people but about all the fantastic things she has been involved in so far. After various song interludes came the weekly slot of poetry readings, from poets in residence; Kishan, Diviesh, Saskia, Zara & Yvette. Each performed one or two peices of extraordinary and powerful work, again inspiring the listeners and giving just a taster of what kind of material is to be showcased at the lyric lounge this year.

Finally we spoke to Damien Walter, about him, his views on community both past and present in the poetry and arts in Leicester, and of course about his involvement with the lounge. Damien is partnered with the lyric lounge and is showing his full support for the event. After this more detail was expressed about how you can sign up for workshops, the events that will be going on over the long weekend and ways to get involved. If you are interested in signing up for any of the workshops you can email: word@wordpoetry.co.uk and take time to visit: http://www.lyriclounge.co.uk/ for full details on workshops and events, or pick up a flyer just about anywhere (thanks to the diligent volunteer program distributers!).

you can listen to last weeks show in full here; http://panjpaniradio.co.uk/category/listen-again/page/2/

By Tara Gatherer

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

Part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6BrZXICsy4&feature=related

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAFUcJy6gQ&feature=youtube_gdata

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

Every month, many many people potter down to the evening of wonder and entertainment that is WORD!. This month being no exception, except that its the last show to be held at the Y theatre before next month it breaks into new walk museum as part of the Lyric Lounge festival. As a regular myself to WORD! i knew what to expect, those who wish to perform arrive promptly at 7pm to sign up and pick their time slots, and members of the audience arrive shortly before 8pm when it begins. There is always a great que of people wanting to sign up, so its always advised to arrive early to avoid disappointment. This months event was slightly different in that WORD! held its Annual General Meeting before sign up, in which the main volunteers that run WORD! and the poets involved, all get together to discuss the highlights and what improvements or suggestions people may have. I arrived only catching the last few minutes of a heated debate about filming issues and promotions for lyric lounge.

On rolled 8pm and Compare Tim Sayers introduced us with a great poem that he had performed this year at Glastonbury, the name of which i shall not mention, and those there will know why! nevertheless it kicked off another great open mic session, 10 performers in the first act, a short break, then final 10 acts before the pre-booked poet, This month renowned and local poet Steve Carrol. The open mic session always breeds diversity and new acts each month, so i was pleased to see this month was no different. several performers took the stage, announcing they hadn’t performed before and a wave of cheering and applause filled the air. thats the great thing about WORD! its not just a chance to have your 3 minutes of fame, but its a community, a supportive and friendly network of people who always encourage any new comers and invite them to put their word out there, in whichever way they chose. After the last performance came Steve Carrol, who amazed us all with his witty poems which was followed by announcements about lyric lounge and a social evening at The Hind.

Afterwards i spoke to Karen Ferguson, a fellow lyric lounge volunteer but a first timer at WORD! who told me what she thought about the evening. ” I went to the Word performance for the first time. We really enjoyed the poem about Leicester, loving leicester myself. The poet spoke of all the different types of food you can eat in Leicester chinese, japanese, caribbean, indian…. She mentioned we have dinosaurs and the lovely blue building our children are fascinated by it so it was funny to hear someone else mention it. I liked the secret life of bees a poem about bees set against a back drop of film and soft music. Lastly thought Steve Carrol actor & poet was brilliant with the poem about his dad who laid roads with his bare hands I could imagine him by the end of the poem. We had a good time and was definately something different.”

Another man i met that night on his first visit had said that, after the first half of seeing how things go, he was then encouraged totally to return next month and perform himself.Proving another sucessful evening for WORD!

By Tara Gatherer