The fourth Words Aloud was a real belter!
A packed to the rafters Runaway Girl saw poetry, prose, video installation and even a cracking a cappella performance. It had everything. And we loved it.
The next dates are: 7 March and 4 April.
It kicks off at 7.35 and usually runs until 9.00 or 10.00pm.
Polite note to readers:
Please observe the [...]

Lee performed The Fair at February’s Words Aloud. Press play to watch again:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm-wdTqSAWE]

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/9/4/7/john_bemyvalentine.mp3]
You used to be a friend of mine
Then I said will you be my valentine
I said, be my valentine
Yeah - be my valentine
That’s when you stopped
Turning up on time
That’s when I started spending
A fortune on wine.
But - be my valentine
I said be my valentine
Beryl the Peril
Loves Korky the cat
But we don’t talk about [...]

Listen again:
[audio http://odeo.com/show/9436973/4/download/EasyPreyByTina.mp3]
Last month Tina became the first person to sing live at Words Aloud. Listen again by clicking play in the player above!

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/3/0/5/robcurryhouse.mp3]
All the chav’s think they are real clever with their Burberry hats and Eyes to close together but check Einstein he wrote the line Relativity He found divine Mass and energy is the same thing E=mc squared is da Bling
A curved prism light gave Newton insight that classical unstable Thermodynamics is the structural [...]

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/3/9/0/lesley.mp3]
She
Each morning, she made a show of dusting his study. And then she bent over his desk, closing her eyes and sniffing the sweet smell of polished wood and ink between the piles of papers. She imagined she could see the glare of the paper, feel the heat of the letters, seeping [...]

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/7/3/0/james.mp3]
James read two poems on the night, both of them were great.
Listen again using the player above.

Listen again: [audio http://odeo.com/show/8756633/1240393/download/TheCowboyByIainBroome.mp3]

Big John Galway drives a Triple Seven on an opencast coal site; three or four times the size of a lorry and basically an oversized dump truck. He’s six foot four or five and built like a brick shit house.
He swears a lot, although like most people who swear a lot, never [...]

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/9/0/2/trudi.mp3]
By the time you read this,
I will be free,
To leave my home
And return at a time,
I decide.
I will wear clothes
That do not consume
My smaller than average breasts,
With pride.
I will choose colours
That suit me
And not you. And
When I speak, the words
Will be my own.
But most of all,
By the time you read this,
I will [...]

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/0/3/9/joanne_egg.mp3]
Egg Mombassa
Steady on the line
Baby – don’t muck them yolks up, man.
Egg Mombassa
Double at dawn
Boyfriend – I’m laying it on you.
Egg Mombassa
Get into it boy
Friends are hungry in the henhouse.
Egg Mombassa
So right for us.

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/4/5/7/joanne_raflikeanibble.mp3]
The RAF like a nibble on those long plane rides
Cheese and cress over Tunisia
Tuna and flesh over Turkey
Oh yes, they like a sandwich or two
Real and strong in their cock pits.
The RAF like a nibble on those long plane rides
Cheese and cress over Tunisia
Tuna and flesh over Turkey…
Oh yes, they like a sandwich [...]

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/4/8/4/trudi_lies.mp3]
Lies
come so easily to you. I watch with awe
As they tum
ble from your mouth, sugar-coated,
Like sweets from a jar.
I shudder, as the taste of them burns my lips, thinking,
How recently it was,
I’d have guzzled them down
So eagerly, like a child, on its first taste of milk.

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/9/9/1/hinchcliffehodgson.mp3]
News of Mussolini and the spread of Fascism bleeps from Broadcasting House. Next door, the Reverend of All Souls unites the congregation as they pray for daily bread and delivery from evil. Soon, the rashes of black shirts in Italy and brown in your Fatherland will blister and rage. You will weep and [...]

Listen again: Richard Crowther - Involuntary Catharsis
This muscle isn’t a metaphor anymore.
This pumping, thumping demon,
worn on sleeves or broken in two, is
quite literally rattling its cage.
It seems the heart’s incarcerated, and yet
we’re told to follow it.
It feels the pain my mind denies me because
I don’t like pain, it sucks ass.
It’s supposed to pump blood
but it [...]

Listen again:
[audio http://media.odeo.com/8/8/2/gav.mp3]

the parking lot
was nearly empty,
her car
looked like a little child’s toy way off in the far corner.
as she trudged along she kept her eyes on the big orange
sun, that was
sinking toward a dark line of trees
in the distance.
she wondered
how much lower and fatter it would be by the time she was on the [...]