June 2007
The Blue Room on Sunday, June 3rd, proved to be a huge success, with brilliant work from the acclaimed: Bob Beagrie, Andy Willoughby, Ann Jolly and Alison Gangel.
Bob Beagrie and Andy Willoughby “One Voice is a tour de force. Performed by poets Bob Beagrie and Andy Willoughby, and musician, it defies easy categorisation. Charting both the ebb and flow of the Tees, and the northern winds whistling through the Finnish trees, this is a stunning soundscape. Reaching places most poets don’t reach, both physically and metaphorically, Beagrie and Willoughby cross borders of state and mind in this show, which reflects on the rapid changes reaped upon the post-industrial north of England, as well as into the heart of darkness and light that is the far north of Europe. A crackling static of continual movement, Willoughby’s elastic sound-mimicry, and Beagrie’s sheer relish of language makes for an electric performance. These guys are truly original, not content in or content to relax into cliché, they are kicking language into hidden corners. This is at once challenging and entertaining stuff, and demands to be heard.” David Woolley Dylan Thomas Centre Swansea.
Ann Jolly was brought up in Scotland but now lives in exile in the south of England. She has worked as a waitress, parent, probation officer, FE lecturer, and is currently writer in residence at Wealstun Prison in Yorkshire. She has been a prize winner in a number of short story competitions and her work has appeared in anthologies published by Fish, Canongate and Serpent’s Tail.
Alison Gangel Award Winning Alison Gangel is originally from Glasgow. She is the single parent of a ten year old and teaches English in a secondary school in Newcastle. She is writing a ‘powerfull and utterly distinctive’ autobiographical novel entitiled – Give That Girl a Spotlight.
