November 2007
The blue room kicked off with an electric workshop from Margaret Wilkinson, who pulled, characters, subtexts and fully formed scenes out of those assembled. She used every available second, covering acres of ground in writing for radio, gave insightful individual feedback and sent everyone away fired up and raring to write.
There was a great line-up and audience (so many, so lovely). Ian Horn gave us a selection of football poems that had us looking tearful one minute and slapping our lederhosen the next before deftly moving on to explore more diverse and surprising work.
There was a change of tone with an elegant Chaz Brenchley showing his versatility with beautifully modulated new work on death that was funny, true and haunting. Then we had globetrotter Ray Liversidge, fresh from Rome who brought us the strangeness of Australia and the shock of the sameness with crisp, precise language and an infectious joie de vivre.
The night was rounded of by Steve Jinski and his phenomenally gifted band who blew us all away with gorgeous music from their upcoming album.
