London Word Festival 2009

	Sat 7 Mar MARY HAMPTON + Caroline Weeks + The Henningham Family Press & Jon Bilbrough Stoke Newington International Airport \| £6.50 adv \| 8pm Exploring the world of balladry in music, poetry and print, two contemporary roots stars folk-up classic English poetry, with live get-your-hands-dirty printmaking that delves into the creative history of the “broadsheet ballad”. A munificent musical bill is led by Sussex folk siren Mary Hampton. Equivocal and ephemeral, echoes of Housman, Yeats and Browning play out [...] Full details
	Sun 8 Mar BISHI + Lupen Crook + more tbc Bardens Boudoir \| £7.50 adv \| 7pm Take a look inside the lyrical engine-room of contemporary folk-extremism. A collection of peculiar artists perform stripped-down acoustic sets to showcase the skill and style used in the construction of modern popular song. South Bank Award nominee, singer and multi-instrumentalism Bishi plays with a specially convened trio, mixing her idiosyncratic British pop with globally folk-influenced [...] Full details
	Mon 9 Mar AN EVENING WITH PHILL JUPITUS & TIM WELLS + Barry Adamson + Amy Prior + Travis Elborough Bethnal Green Working Men's Club \| £8 adv \| 7pm Join Renaissance men Phill Jupitus and Tim Wells for a comfy ‘evening in’ on the sofa. Somewhere between a lazy Sunday with two music-anorak dads and a live radio show, Phill and Tim open up their Aladdin’s Cave of vinyl rareties, escorting you on a trip down memory lane. A night featuring a rich assortment [...] Full details
	Wed 11 Mar SHAKESPEARE IN SHOREDITCH Siddhartha Bose, Joe Dunthorne, Jean Hannah Edelstein, Salena Godden, Lee Rourke & Mustashrik South of the Border \| £6 adv \| 8pm In August 2008, archaeologists unearthed in Curtain Road – under layers of pinstripe pocket-frocks and Belgium EBM white labels – the corner of The Theatre: England’s, and Shakespeare’s, first. Taking Shoreditch as the starting point, five authors perform re-interpretations of Shakespearean scenes and themes, with projected live drawing by Mustashrik, illustrator of the Manga version [...] Full details
	Thu 12 Mar WAVE MACHINES & NATHAN JONES + Serafina + Chris McCabe Bardens Boudoir \| £7.50 adv \| 7pm Reminiscent of Vangelis’ Blade Runner score, a little US Televangelism and a bit of Jackanory, the Wave Machines hook up with Nathan Jones for a tremulous spoken word performance with a dynamic live synth and percussion soundtrack. Nathan and the Waves host their own series of acclaimed shows in Liverpool and this is a first [...] Full details
	Tue 17 Mar THE ETERNAL CHILDREN & LOW: YOU MAY NEED A MURDERER + Q&A with director David Kleijwegt + DJs Cafe Oto \| £6.50 adv \| 7pm (7.30pm start) Celebrate independent documentary filmmaking and alternative music through the UK premiere of two films by Dutch director David Kleijwegt. The Eternal Children is a touching portrayal of artists who share a common spirituality and lyrical understanding of the world, featuring the likes of Devandra Banhart and CocoRosie; a window into the world of a hopeful [...] Full details
	Wed 18 Mar INUA ELLAMS’ THE 14TH TALE Performances Wed 18, Thu 19 & Fri 20 Arcola Theatre \| £9/ £7 conc. \| 8.15pm “I’m from a long line of trouble makers, of ash skinned Africans, born with clenched fists and a natural thirst for battle, only quenched by breast milk.” The 14th Tale is a free-flowing, mellifluous narrative that tells of the exploits of a natural born mischief-maker who grows from the clay streets of Nigeria to the roof-tops [...] Full details
	Sat 21 Mar IAIN SINCLAIR: HACKNEY ASCENSION DAY with Kirsten Norrie; sound installation by Susan Stenger St Augustine's Tower \| £8 adv \| 2.30pm, 4pm, 5.30pm Join cult author, poet and filmmaker Iain Sinclair for a one-of-its-kind, site-specific performance in Hackney’s oldest and most mysterious structure: the remains of the church of St Augustine’s. Sinclair will draw on his book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire to uncover an alternative history of the borough. As you ascend to the roof of the Tower, [...] Full details
	Sun 22 Mar WEBSTOCKY Idiots of Ants, Tim Key, Luke Wright, Chris Hicks, Donal Coonan, Stuart Silver, Answer Me This, I Should Draw More, Karen McCarthy's My T-Shirt Says + MC Matthew Crosby Vibe Live \| £8 \| 3pm The geek shall inherit the earth. Over three performance spaces across the second floor of the Vibe Bar, comedians, poets and artists celebrate and commiserate Web 2.0. A kind of dynamic HTML all over your temporal lobe. Idiots of Ants slide off YouTube screens into immaculately suited sketch-comedy absurdity and Tim Key shuffles about in [...] Full details
	Tue 24 Mar OX TALES Joseph D'Lacy, Ross Raisin, Abigail Oborne compered by Karen Hayley The Slaughtered Lamb \| £6 adv \| 7pm Within chewing distance of Smithfield, novelists Joseph D’Lacy and Ross Raisin head up an evening inspired by flesh and butchery. D’Lacy’s Meat is a tale of human depravity set in a grim, post-cataclysmic England where meat is sanctified and slaughterhouse worker must keep his secret vegetarianism to himself. Ross Raisin works at Smith’s of Smithfield [...] Full details
	Wed 25 Mar ROBIN INCE’S SCHOOL FOR GIFTED CHILDREN Ben Goldacre, Ben Moor, Gavin Osborne, Jo Neary, Rich Sandling, Dave Gorman, Helen Zaltzman, Martin Austwick + more Bethnal Green Working Men's Club \| £8 adv \| 7pm This should be the best lecture you ever had, but all splintered and haphazard, like the popular children’s magazine of knowledge, Look And Learn. Like a Show and Tell, with fewer dinosaurs and more words. And some of those words will be songs. A whole curriculum of wit and accidental profundity. With The Guardian’s bad [...] Full details

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