LONDON WORD FESTIVAL -

What? London’s pioneering celebration of words, text and language returns for another year, playing host to the most adventurous programme yet.

With everything from music to stand-up, through shadow-puppetry, micro-lectures, screen-printing nuns and performance poetry, to crime-comic-jazz interpretations: this is the festival that looks way beyond the page.

When? -No Festival in 2012

Where? Various locations around London

How much? Various

Who? No-one in 2012

“I could easily imagine Dickens, Addison or Dr Johnson doing a brilliant ‘set’ at the London Word Festival."
– Richard Morrison, The Times
“ever wonderful”
– The Independent
“London’s alternative literature festival”
– The Guardian
"a gift from the linguistic gods"
– The Londonist
“the cat’s pyjamas”

Festival Website? www.londonwordfestival.com | www.twitter.com/ldnwordfestival

FESTIVAL LINE UP:

	Thu 7 - Wed 20 Apr Cybraphon Richmix Cafe \| 10am-5pm daily \| FREE Cybraphon is the Bafta Award-winning autonomous emotional robot indie band. Created by Edinburgh-based music and arts collective FOUND, Cybraphon is an interactive, mechanical band consisting of acoustic instruments, antique machinery and found objects played by over 60 robot beaters and motors – all housed in an antique wooden display case. Cybraphon wants to be popular. [...]
	Fri 8 - Sat 23 Apr The Quiet Volume by Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells Bishopsgate Institute Library - April 8, 11-15 \| £12 / £10 conc. Hackney Library – April 16, 18-21, 23 \| £12 / £10 conc. (Ticket covers two participants) The Quiet Volume is a whispered, self-generated performance for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different people’s experiences of reading unfold. Two readers sit side-by-side. Taking cues from words both written and whispered they find themselves burrowing an unlikely [...]
	Sat 9 - Sun 10 April This is just to say by Hannah Jane Walker Toynbee Arts Cafe & Bar \| £8 \| 2pm & 5pm Why do we say sorry? And how do we say it like we really mean it? Hannah Jane Walker hosts an intimate round table performance with a small, invited audience, sifting the genuine from the insincere, drawing on her personal experiences as a serial apologist in emotionally valiant and surprising ways. Secret notes, screened calls [...]
	Tue 12 April Books vs. Cigarettes Robin Ince, Stuart Evers + more tbc Dalston Boys' Club \| 7pm \| £8 adv/£10 door Book habits. Costly business. Or are they? In his 1946 essay, George Orwell compared the cost of reading with more proletariat pursuits and calculated his book consumption at 9s 9d a week. Equivalent to 83 Players Special, or four ounces of tobacco at the time. Which pursuit gives more pleasure? Orwell defended reading as an inclusive [...]
	Sun 17 Apr Scrabble Sunday Tournament Pembury Tavern \| 3pm \| FREE Our friends from Scrabble Sunday return with a Word Festival special. An afternoon of knockout word-battle in East London’s best boardgaming pub. We bring the boards, you bring the vocab. Compete for the Scrabble Sunday cup and excellent prizes or drop in and play a social game. For those (oddcakes) who don’t care for the [...]
	Mon 18 Apr Private View Baby Oil & Ice featuring new work by Rob Rainbow, Liza Angst, Ima Doll & more tbc Sushi by Hannah Silva + more tbc Ye Olde Axe \| 8pm \| £8.50 adv/£10.50 door An evening of performance inspired by the striptease trade, set in one of Hackney’s grandest Victorian strip-joints, Ye Olde Axe. Baby Oil & Ice lifted the veil on the world of pub striptease in London’s East End, a publication collecting over 100 images of venues, changing rooms, performance and punters with writing by the strippers, staff [...]
	Tue 19 Apr Man/Machine Paul Granjon + FOUND + Ross Sutherland + Nikesh Shukla + Tamarin Norwood + MC Nathan Penlington Richmix \| 7.30pm \| £8 adv/£10 door A night of performance exploring technology, robotics and automation. Paul Granjon and his robotic support cast present Low Tech Songs and Servo Drive: a combination of video, home-made cardboard instruments, hard-wired disco and reflections on modern robotics. Author Nikesh Shukla dons his white coat and bionic arm to play a scientist with an obsession with comics [...]
	Thu 21 Apr No Furniture So Charming Bethnal Green Library \| 7pm \| £5 adv/£7 door A night devoted to the architecture of knowledge, and the future of book-borrowing. Much more than just bricks and mortar, the public lending library has long been considered the cornerstone of an educated and literate population. Yet, as the way we use libraries has changed, so too has their function as a physical space. Borrowing its [...]
	Sat 23 Apr King James Bible Bash Stoke Newington International Airport 7pm \| \| £8 adv/£tbc door London Word Festival, the Henningham Family Press and friends throw a four-hundredth birthday party for the King James Bible. Music, art, literature and film commune for an evening of performance and print. A revisiting of the Bible narrative, as seen through the spectacles of contemporary fiction, pop culture and secular ideas. We dip into the Monday School syllabus [...]
	Tue 26 Apr Intergender Wrestling Devised by Mel Brimfield Hosted by Sir Francis Spalding Featuring Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon, Joanna Neary, Josie Long, Oompah Brass, Helen Lederer, Isy Suttie, Rachel Pantechnicon, The Beaux Belles & referee Tim Wells* The Nave \| 7.30pm \| £10 adv/£12 doors Fascinated by kayfabe, the elaborate staged nature of professional wrestling, ambiguous comedian Andy Kaufman gained notoriety for wrestling women during his live act, proclaiming himself the Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World. Taking on an outrageous wrestling persona, based on the characters created by professional fighters, he would offer any woman in the crowd $1000 [...]
	Wed 27 Apr The Goodbye Library by Emmy The Great & Jack Underwood Featuring Elizabeth Sankey (Summer Camp), Miriam Elia, Joe Dunthorne The Nave \| 7.30pm \| £9 adv/£11 doors Please bring a book you no longer want to the show. Mining the Dewey Decimal classification system, Emmy The Great and poet Jack Underwood waltz through ten sections of their 000-999. Inspired and shaped by categories found in British libraries. From True-Life Tragedy, through Mind, Body & Spirit, Sociology, Large Print, and Teen Fiction, Emmy and Jack use song, poetry, multimedia to present a light-hearted lament [...]
	Thu 28 Apr Like You Were Before by Debbie Pearson *Stoke Newington International Airport \| 7pm (7.30pm start) \| £8 (£12.50 joint ticket for Like You Were Before* & Keep Breathing)** “Debbie Pearson’s piece uses old video footage to explore the gap between the person she was in 2005 before she left her native Canada, and the person she is now. The person she was is a ghost behind the camera, never as in focus as the laughing female friends she will soon wave goodbye to; [...
	Thu 28 Apr Keep Breathing by Chris Goode *Stoke Newington International Airport 8.30pm (9pm start) \| £8 (£12.50 joint ticket for Like You Were Before* & Keep Breathing)** Nitrogen, oxygen and argon; love, laughter and longing; hopes, ideas, testimony. Breath — as evanescent as theatre, and every bit as full of incident and promise. In this early draft showing of a brand new piece of evolving, responsive storytelling, Chris Goode looks at what can be found, said and shared in one brief, vital exhalation. [...
	Fri 29 Apr - Sun 1 May The Crash Devised by Tom Basden, Francesca Millican-Slater, James Wilkes & Joe Dunthorne With Iain Sinclair, David Aaronovitch & Geraint Anderson (Cityboy) 60 Farringdon Road \| 2pm & 2.30pm \| £10 adv/£12 door September 2008. Without warning or explanation, an elite group of hedge fund managers disappear from their City headquarters. Rumours spread through glass offices and cocktail bars. Reports of strange happenings on Cheapside, abandoned experiments; esoteric financial mechanisms gone wrong, and vigilantes on the prowl. Three years on, and a team of investigators operating below the [...]
	Tue 3 May Christian Bök + Luke Kennard + Maria Fusco + MC Ross Sutherland + more tbc Vibe Live \| 7.30pm \| £6.50 adv/£8 doors Acclaimed Canadian experimental poet Christian Bök makes a rare trip to the UK. Author of the bestselling Oulipian book Eunoia and the ‘pataphysical encyclopaedia Crystallography, Bök creates conceptual art and viral poetry, makes artist’s books from Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks, and alien languages for Gene Roddenberry. Bök will perform his uncanny feats of compositional [...]
	Wed 4 May Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic Steve Aylett, Robin Ince, Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie, Kevin O'Neill & The Retro Spankees Round Chapel \| 7pm \| £10 adv/£12 door Alan Moore’s reinvigoration of the underground fanzine, Dodgem Logic, comes alive in the non-conformist surroundings of Hackney’s Round Chapel. A night of art, comedy, comment and put-something-back localism. Released bi-monthly since 2009, Dodgem Logic is equal parts escapist entertainment, social curiosity and grassroots activism: a formidable pick-and-mix of hardworking humour and indie-essaying. An ink-stained-mantle-carrier for [...]
	Thu 5 May Be Seeing You + post performance DJs (til late) Bethnal Green Working Mens Club \| 7.30pm \| £7.50 adv/£9 door Prepare to be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered. Combining 1960s countercultural themes, surrealism, science fiction and fantasy, cult television series ‘The Prisoner’ brought to life the mysterious dystopian resort setting of The Village. Be Seeing You takes its cue from Episode 6, in which an elaborate mind control system Speedlearn, backed by a mysterious [...]

We apprecicate you insights into literary festivals that you might have attended or are hoping to get too, or your views on award winning books.

	Thu 7 - Wed 20 Apr Cybraphon Richmix Cafe \| 10am-5pm daily \| FREE Cybraphon is the Bafta Award-winning autonomous emotional robot indie band. Created by Edinburgh-based music and arts collective FOUND, Cybraphon is an interactive, mechanical band consisting of acoustic instruments, antique machinery and found objects played by over 60 robot beaters and motors – all housed in an antique wooden display case. Cybraphon wants to be popular. [...]
	Fri 8 - Sat 23 Apr The Quiet Volume by Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells Bishopsgate Institute Library - April 8, 11-15 \| £12 / £10 conc. Hackney Library – April 16, 18-21, 23 \| £12 / £10 conc. (Ticket covers two participants) The Quiet Volume is a whispered, self-generated performance for two at a time, exploiting the particular tension common to any library worldwide; a combination of silence and concentration within which different people’s experiences of reading unfold. Two readers sit side-by-side. Taking cues from words both written and whispered they find themselves burrowing an unlikely [...]
	Sat 9 - Sun 10 April This is just to say by Hannah Jane Walker Toynbee Arts Cafe & Bar \| £8 \| 2pm & 5pm Why do we say sorry? And how do we say it like we really mean it? Hannah Jane Walker hosts an intimate round table performance with a small, invited audience, sifting the genuine from the insincere, drawing on her personal experiences as a serial apologist in emotionally valiant and surprising ways. Secret notes, screened calls [...]
	Tue 12 April Books vs. Cigarettes Robin Ince, Stuart Evers + more tbc Dalston Boys' Club \| 7pm \| £8 adv/£10 door Book habits. Costly business. Or are they? In his 1946 essay, George Orwell compared the cost of reading with more proletariat pursuits and calculated his book consumption at 9s 9d a week. Equivalent to 83 Players Special, or four ounces of tobacco at the time. Which pursuit gives more pleasure? Orwell defended reading as an inclusive [...]
	Sun 17 Apr Scrabble Sunday Tournament Pembury Tavern \| 3pm \| FREE Our friends from Scrabble Sunday return with a Word Festival special. An afternoon of knockout word-battle in East London’s best boardgaming pub. We bring the boards, you bring the vocab. Compete for the Scrabble Sunday cup and excellent prizes or drop in and play a social game. For those (oddcakes) who don’t care for the [...]
	Mon 18 Apr Private View Baby Oil & Ice featuring new work by Rob Rainbow, Liza Angst, Ima Doll & more tbc Sushi by Hannah Silva + more tbc Ye Olde Axe \| 8pm \| £8.50 adv/£10.50 door An evening of performance inspired by the striptease trade, set in one of Hackney’s grandest Victorian strip-joints, Ye Olde Axe. Baby Oil & Ice lifted the veil on the world of pub striptease in London’s East End, a publication collecting over 100 images of venues, changing rooms, performance and punters with writing by the strippers, staff [...]
	Tue 19 Apr Man/Machine Paul Granjon + FOUND + Ross Sutherland + Nikesh Shukla + Tamarin Norwood + MC Nathan Penlington Richmix \| 7.30pm \| £8 adv/£10 door A night of performance exploring technology, robotics and automation. Paul Granjon and his robotic support cast present Low Tech Songs and Servo Drive: a combination of video, home-made cardboard instruments, hard-wired disco and reflections on modern robotics. Author Nikesh Shukla dons his white coat and bionic arm to play a scientist with an obsession with comics [...]
	Thu 21 Apr No Furniture So Charming Bethnal Green Library \| 7pm \| £5 adv/£7 door A night devoted to the architecture of knowledge, and the future of book-borrowing. Much more than just bricks and mortar, the public lending library has long been considered the cornerstone of an educated and literate population. Yet, as the way we use libraries has changed, so too has their function as a physical space. Borrowing its [...]
	Sat 23 Apr King James Bible Bash Stoke Newington International Airport 7pm \| \| £8 adv/£tbc door London Word Festival, the Henningham Family Press and friends throw a four-hundredth birthday party for the King James Bible. Music, art, literature and film commune for an evening of performance and print. A revisiting of the Bible narrative, as seen through the spectacles of contemporary fiction, pop culture and secular ideas. We dip into the Monday School syllabus [...]
	Tue 26 Apr Intergender Wrestling Devised by Mel Brimfield Hosted by Sir Francis Spalding Featuring Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon, Joanna Neary, Josie Long, Oompah Brass, Helen Lederer, Isy Suttie, Rachel Pantechnicon, The Beaux Belles & referee Tim Wells* The Nave \| 7.30pm \| £10 adv/£12 doors Fascinated by kayfabe, the elaborate staged nature of professional wrestling, ambiguous comedian Andy Kaufman gained notoriety for wrestling women during his live act, proclaiming himself the Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World. Taking on an outrageous wrestling persona, based on the characters created by professional fighters, he would offer any woman in the crowd $1000 [...]
	Wed 27 Apr The Goodbye Library by Emmy The Great & Jack Underwood Featuring Elizabeth Sankey (Summer Camp), Miriam Elia, Joe Dunthorne The Nave \| 7.30pm \| £9 adv/£11 doors Please bring a book you no longer want to the show. Mining the Dewey Decimal classification system, Emmy The Great and poet Jack Underwood waltz through ten sections of their 000-999. Inspired and shaped by categories found in British libraries. From True-Life Tragedy, through Mind, Body & Spirit, Sociology, Large Print, and Teen Fiction, Emmy and Jack use song, poetry, multimedia to present a light-hearted lament [...]
	Thu 28 Apr Like You Were Before by Debbie Pearson *Stoke Newington International Airport \| 7pm (7.30pm start) \| £8 (£12.50 joint ticket for Like You Were Before* & Keep Breathing)** “Debbie Pearson’s piece uses old video footage to explore the gap between the person she was in 2005 before she left her native Canada, and the person she is now. The person she was is a ghost behind the camera, never as in focus as the laughing female friends she will soon wave goodbye to; [...
	Thu 28 Apr Keep Breathing by Chris Goode *Stoke Newington International Airport 8.30pm (9pm start) \| £8 (£12.50 joint ticket for Like You Were Before* & Keep Breathing)** Nitrogen, oxygen and argon; love, laughter and longing; hopes, ideas, testimony. Breath — as evanescent as theatre, and every bit as full of incident and promise. In this early draft showing of a brand new piece of evolving, responsive storytelling, Chris Goode looks at what can be found, said and shared in one brief, vital exhalation. [...
	Fri 29 Apr - Sun 1 May The Crash Devised by Tom Basden, Francesca Millican-Slater, James Wilkes & Joe Dunthorne With Iain Sinclair, David Aaronovitch & Geraint Anderson (Cityboy) 60 Farringdon Road \| 2pm & 2.30pm \| £10 adv/£12 door September 2008. Without warning or explanation, an elite group of hedge fund managers disappear from their City headquarters. Rumours spread through glass offices and cocktail bars. Reports of strange happenings on Cheapside, abandoned experiments; esoteric financial mechanisms gone wrong, and vigilantes on the prowl. Three years on, and a team of investigators operating below the [...]
	Tue 3 May Christian Bök + Luke Kennard + Maria Fusco + MC Ross Sutherland + more tbc Vibe Live \| 7.30pm \| £6.50 adv/£8 doors Acclaimed Canadian experimental poet Christian Bök makes a rare trip to the UK. Author of the bestselling Oulipian book Eunoia and the ‘pataphysical encyclopaedia Crystallography, Bök creates conceptual art and viral poetry, makes artist’s books from Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks, and alien languages for Gene Roddenberry. Bök will perform his uncanny feats of compositional [...]
	Wed 4 May Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic Steve Aylett, Robin Ince, Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie, Kevin O'Neill & The Retro Spankees Round Chapel \| 7pm \| £10 adv/£12 door Alan Moore’s reinvigoration of the underground fanzine, Dodgem Logic, comes alive in the non-conformist surroundings of Hackney’s Round Chapel. A night of art, comedy, comment and put-something-back localism. Released bi-monthly since 2009, Dodgem Logic is equal parts escapist entertainment, social curiosity and grassroots activism: a formidable pick-and-mix of hardworking humour and indie-essaying. An ink-stained-mantle-carrier for [...]
	Thu 5 May Be Seeing You + post performance DJs (til late) Bethnal Green Working Mens Club \| 7.30pm \| £7.50 adv/£9 door Prepare to be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed and numbered. Combining 1960s countercultural themes, surrealism, science fiction and fantasy, cult television series ‘The Prisoner’ brought to life the mysterious dystopian resort setting of The Village. Be Seeing You takes its cue from Episode 6, in which an elaborate mind control system Speedlearn, backed by a mysterious [...]

www.literaryfestivals.co.uk- incorporating Literary awards UK

LONDON WORD FESTIVAL -

Thu 7 - Wed 20 Apr

Cybraphon

Fri 8 - Sat 23 Apr

The Quiet Volume

by Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells

Sat 9 - Sun 10 April

This is just to say

by Hannah Jane Walker

Tue 12 April

Books vs. Cigarettes

Robin Ince, Stuart Evers + more tbc

Sun 17 Apr

Scrabble Sunday Tournament

Mon 18 Apr

Private View

Baby Oil & Ice featuring new work by Rob Rainbow, Liza Angst, Ima Doll & more tbc Sushi by Hannah Silva + more tbc

Tue 19 Apr

Man/Machine

Paul Granjon + FOUND + Ross Sutherland + Nikesh Shukla + Tamarin Norwood + MC Nathan Penlington

Thu 21 Apr

No Furniture So Charming

Sat 23 Apr

King James Bible Bash

Tue 26 Apr

Intergender Wrestling

Devised by Mel Brimfield Hosted by Sir Francis Spalding Featuring Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon, Joanna Neary, Josie Long, Oompah Brass, Helen Lederer, Isy Suttie, Rachel Pantechnicon, The Beaux Belles & referee Tim Wells*

Wed 27 Apr

The Goodbye Library

by Emmy The Great & Jack Underwood Featuring Elizabeth Sankey (Summer Camp), Miriam Elia, Joe Dunthorne

Thu 28 Apr

Like You Were Before

by Debbie Pearson

Thu 28 Apr

Keep Breathing

by Chris Goode

Fri 29 Apr - Sun 1 May

The Crash

Devised by Tom Basden, Francesca Millican-Slater, James Wilkes & Joe Dunthorne With Iain Sinclair, David Aaronovitch & Geraint Anderson (Cityboy)

Tue 3 May

Christian Bök

+ Luke Kennard + Maria Fusco + MC Ross Sutherland + more tbc

Wed 4 May

Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic

Steve Aylett, Robin Ince, Savage Pencil, Melinda Gebbie, Kevin O'Neill & The Retro Spankees

Thu 5 May

Be Seeing You

+ post performance DJs (til late)

Comment

Baby Oil & Ice featuring new work by Rob Rainbow, Liza Angst, Ima Doll & more tbc
Sushi by Hannah Silva
+ more tbc

Devised by Mel Brimfield
Hosted by Sir Francis Spalding
Featuring Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon, Joanna Neary, Josie Long, Oompah Brass, Helen Lederer, Isy Suttie, Rachel Pantechnicon, The Beaux Belles & referee Tim Wells*

by Emmy The Great & Jack Underwood
Featuring Elizabeth Sankey (Summer Camp), Miriam Elia, Joe Dunthorne

Devised by Tom Basden, Francesca Millican-Slater, James Wilkes & Joe Dunthorne
With Iain Sinclair, David Aaronovitch & Geraint Anderson (Cityboy)

+ Luke Kennard
+ Maria Fusco
+ MC Ross Sutherland
+ more tbc