BIP001: THE AMERICAN CONNECTION
The BIP (Bristol International Poetry) events have been running for 3 years now, but the 2001 show looks to be rather special for a number of reasons. Firstly for me, Stazja McFadyen will be here. Although I am excited about all the poets’ performances, I have learnt more about hosting international poetry events from Stazja than anyone else I have ever met (barring perhaps Thom the World Poet). On a less personal note, this will be the first BIP event that has received funding from the organisers of the Bristol Poetry Festival, The Poetry Can (Bristol and Bath Poetry Development Agency).

The first BIP event took place three weeks before the Bristol Poetry Festival back in 1999. We scheduled for September because our one international star, Thom TWP, was touring then and not in October during the festival dates. There was some concern from The Poetry Can that our little weekend shindig might undermine their 3-week literary extravaganza. The use of “BIPF” as the title for our event (“F” for Festival, you see) also annoyed them. Up until this year, The Poetry Can have offered little incentive for local poets to get involved in the festival. If you wanted to perform in the festival you would have to run your own show at your own expense and The Poetry Can would (barring mishaps and if you got your copy in months in advance) include you in the festival programme.

BIP2000 (we dropped the F to keep the peace) was a storming success. There was a lot of networking and negotiation in the run-up to the event, which meant that those international artists who performed in Bristol also played in London, Sheffield and Southampton as part of a 4-week festival tour. We scheduled the event for October as well, which meant it came inside the festival dates. This made The Poetry Can happy and we got into the programme, so we were happy too. It was still un-funded, however, and although most of the poets got paid, it all came from the promoter’s pockets.

This year (as explained in my last Museletter) The Poetry Can have offered to fund BIP001. They capped event budgets at £800 so we’ve still had to find a few odds and sods, but £800 will go a long way to relieving the financial burden. They’ve also provided a great venue for part of the festival (The Arnolfini), where BIP001 is happily being staged. So things are looking good for this year's event and we all hope BIP001 will continue its success in bringing international poets and audiences together.

A few questions hanging in the air: How many of those events that didn’t get any festival funding were based solely on local poets? Is The Bristol Poetry Festival about Bristol poetry or about paying someone from outside Bristol to come and perform there? Whose poetry is The Bristol and Bath Poetry Development Agency trying to develop? But the show goes on:

BIP001
Wednesday, October 10th
Arnolfini, Bristol
(as part of Bristol Poetry Festival, 4th-14th October 2001)

Charles Ellik (San Francisco, CA)
Charles Ellik is blessed with a life which revolves around poetry and the San Francisco Bay Area spoken word scene. He gained a BA in Studio Arts from California State University, Long Beach in 1995 and worked for a period as an assistant floor broker at the Pacific Stock Exchange. In 1997, he began hosting the SF Slam and touched off an explosion in local competitions and poetry events, leading to a tied National Slam title for the San Francisco and San Jose teams in 1999. He currently emcees the Berzerkeley Slam and produces a weekly newsletter, The SF Update. He has toured across North America, but this is his first UK visit. Charles has been published in Next Magazine, Pearl, Sheila-Na-Gig, Yummi Hussi & Stinki Pen. He is a great poet and is regarded by some as the best poetry plam team coach in the US. He received the best coach award at the Western Regional Poetry Slam1999 and 2000, the National Poetry Slam 2000 and the International Collegiate Slam 2001.

Ellyn Maybe (Los Angeles, CA)
Ellyn is inspired by Dylan, Cohen, Ochs, Beats, Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti and her own misfitness. She is the author of The Cowardice of Amnesia, Putting My 2 Cents In and The Ellyn Maybe Colouring Book (Sacred Beverage). Writer’s Digest named her one of ten poets to watch in the new millennium. Her work is included in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and American Poetry: The Next Generation. Ellyn was on the 1998 and 1999 Venice Beach Slam teams, opened the MTV Spoken Word Tour in Los Angeles and will be seen reading her work in Michael Radford’s (Il Postino) upcoming film Dancing at the Blue Iguana.

Stazja McFadyen (Austin, TX)
Stazja McFadyen is an equal opportunity poet. She sits up straight at poetry society and arts council meetings and then gets down on the sidewalk with street poets. As a human rights poet activist, she is a contributor to Will Work For Peace: New Political Poems, Poets4Peace and the United Nations' Dialogue Among Civilisations Through Poetry. Stazja has featured at festivals and spoken word venues throughout the United States, and has made a number of guest appearances on radio stations KUT-FM, KMFA-FM, KOOP-FM (Austin, TX) and www.KUCI.com (University of California) via the Internet. Stazja is venue co-ordinator for the Austin International Poetry Festival and editor/publisher of the Map of Austin Poetry and PoEmPath e-newsletters. She is also the monthly host of the First Sundays Poetry Slam in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Kevin Patrick Sullivan (San Luis Obispo, CA)
Kevin co-founded The Annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival and Corners of the Mouth monthly reading series in 1984, and now serves as artistic director for both programs. His poem “Blue Sky” was turned into a chorale by composer John Biggs and performed by the San Luis Obispo Vocal Arts Ensemble in San Miguel, San Luis Obispo and two European cathedrals, The Holy Infant of Prague and Fot Cathedral in Hungary. In 2001, Kevin’s commissioned poem, “I Offer My Voice,” was set to music and performed by the San Luis Obispo High School choir on their summer tour of Europe. His outreach work with K-12 students has been designated by California Governor Gray Davis and The California Arts Council as “an exemplary arts education program” and has received a grant of $20,000. He is also a contract artist teaching poetry at California Men's Colony for the California Arts and Corrections Program.

SLAM! PRODUCTIONS WITH MARCUS MOORE AND SARA-JANE ARBURY
Sara-Jane Arbury and Marcus Moore are the UK’s leading poetry slam organisers and presenters. Each year they host a season of slams at festivals and theatres, including the prestigious UK Allcomers Poetry Slam (now in its 7th year) on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature (October 12th). This is Europe’s largest and longest-running performance poetry contest and attracts participants and an audience in the hundreds.

The first time I met Marcus was at the Bristol Brew House (now the Bristol Comedy Pub). He was the first non-Bristol poet, of worth, that I had ever seen. I suddenly realised that some people had been doing this poetry thing for a while now and I perhaps had some catching up to do. My only strong memory of the night (we’re talking circa 1994 here) was that Marcus’s set included the use of a 6-inch plastic caricature of Margaret Thatcher. Marcus has played over 200 gigs in the last five years, including most of the national radio and TV stations, some of the best literary, arts and music festivals and at least a couple of Her Majesty's prisons (as a guest you understand, of the warden, not Her Majesty).

His resident partner in poetic pioneering, Sara-Jane Arbury, has been strutting her stuff around the UK for as long as I can remember and has been seriously influential on both a local (Bristol, where she started out) and national level. Sara-Jane programmes the voices off events at Cheltenham Festival of Literature and is a founding member of Pimp$ of the Alphab£t Press. Pimp$ were responsible for publishing the highly successful Bristol Slam Poetry Anthology.

Sara-Jane has been working with Marcus on Slam! Productions since 1997. Marcus feels that they offer a package of complementary skills across a range of activities from hosting slams to running workshops to performing to helping develop performance poetry through residencies and slam-fests, etc. Sara-Jane and he ran the first ever prison Slam, at HMP Gloucester, known affectionately as “The Slam in the Slammer!” “The format,” he says, “encourages open participation and can be adapted to suit any venue or occasion.”

Slam! Productions offer almost any style of poetry event, workshop or heady, hair-brained, literary concoction, you may choose to imagine. Their newest venture has been Spiel, a monthly email newsletter. In Marcus’s own words (mostly):

The rationale behind Spiel was pretty straightforward really. The Slam! Productions’ mailing list was getting too long and required too many hours licking envelopes. As our list of contacts increasingly reflected a move towards electronic mail, we decided to send out a monthly update not only of what we were doing, but also details of other slams/open microphone gigs in the UK. Logging on to Web sites brought in many more contacts and the list has doubled in under six months.

Spiel’s development has been organic and the feedback suggests our ‘subscribers’ enjoy the tongue-in-cheek style, even if they aren’t regular slammers. We only list gigs that are slams/open microphone, because many of our contacts are on the lookout for places to get up and strut their stuff, although we do also include Web sites/competitions of interest.

People who make me laugh turn me on which is why I am humoursexual

Sara-Jane Arbury

Take out the word and the world is ‘el’ without it

when christ said father why hast thou forsaken me
just where was the child support agency

Marcus Moore

• Sun 23 Sep - The 3rd Worcester City Slam! at the Swan Theatre, 8 pm
• Mon 24 Sep - The 6th Oxford Playhouse Slam! in the theatre bar, 8 pm
• Fri 12 Oct - The 7th UK Allcomers Poetry Slam! at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature (qualifier at 1 pm, main event 9 pm to midnight)
• Thu 15 Nov - The 4th Worcester City Slam! at the Swan Theatre, 8 pm
• Sat 17 Nov - The 3rd Taunton Deane Slam! Municipal Hall, 7:30 pm
• Mon 19 Nov - The 7th Oxford Playhouse Slam! in the theatre bar, 8 pm
• Thu 6 Dec - The 1st South Hill Park Slam! in Bracknell, Berkshire, 8 pm

SLAM! Productions
spoken word ~ written word ~ anywhere ~ everywhere
20 Coxwell Street, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, GL7 2BH
phone: 01285 640470
email: slam@scarum.freeserve.co.uk

OCTOBER IN THE UK
Here are some good UK dates for October on the international poetry front:

October 5 - Say It Loud (Bristol)
At CEED Auditorium, doors open at 8 pm, cost is £4/£3. Contact Rupert Hopkins, 0117 924 4219 or Kevin Philemon, 0117 942 9555. Say It Loud is an event hosted by CEED Media Centre and Eagle Eye as part of Bristol Poetry Festival. It will take place in the CEED Auditorium at 17-19 Dean Street, just off Portland Square and will feature three poets from the renowned Nuyorican Poets Café in New York plus Thom the World Poet from Texas:

• Tehut-Nine, who as part of a wider European tour gave a stunning performance at The Full Moon on Stokes Croft last June, has published two poetry books, The Fire In Me and Mental Eye-roglyphics, and has shared the stage with performers such as Mary J. Blige and Busta Rhymes, as well as activists like Bobby Seale and Amiri Baraka.
  
  
• Glenis Redmond creates a stir when she enters a room. She was a member of the 1996 National Champion Asheville slam team. Time Out says of Glenis, “It’s the way her words draw you into a seemingly innocuous subject and singe you with the fury of intelligence scorned. It’s in another league.”
  
  
• Patricia Starek was on the same 1996 winning slam team and like Glenis Redmond is a South Carolina native. She now resides in Brooklyn and is a regular performer at the Nuyoricans Poets Café and Bar 13. Her most recent publications include Steam Dreams: An Anthology of Poetic Thoughts on Race, Politics and Love and Goliard Magazine. Her first chapbook is Run on Life and currently she is writing two children’s books.
  
  
• Thom the World Poet is renowned for his witty and sometimes cutting improvised poetry. Born in Australia, he now resides in Austin, Texas. TTWP engages the audience with his stream of consciousness and bardic verse. He always leaves the audience wanting more and feeling uplifted and inspired.
  
  
• Also featured will be the renowned Jamaican poet Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, fresh from her role in the Bristol Old Vic production of One Love. She would bring the house down on her own, so this poetry event, which has received no arts funding whatsoever and is independently produced for Bristol Poetry Festival, will kick off the festival with a poetical fireworks display.

October 8 - Quantum Lip (London)
Charles Ellik (San Francisco) plays The Bedford, 77 Bedford Hill, London (one minute walk from Balham tube, south of the Northern Line) on October 8. The show starts at 9 pm, but get there early for good seats. Contact Philip Wells at thefirepoet@aol.com or James Carrington (Entertainments Manager) on 044 787 9630058.

October 12-14 - The 2nd Paddington International Poetry Festival (London)
The 2nd Paddington International Poetry Festival is happening on the 12th, 13th and 14th of October. Halfway between Portobello Road and Maida Vale: On Friday and Saturday at Paddington Arts, 32 Woodfield Road W9, on Sunday at Pinocchio's, 45-47 Elgin Avenue W9. The nearest tube is Westbourne Park. Buses 18, 31, 36 and 328 run nearly to the door. Varied and well-structured events will run each night from 8 till midnight, cost £5.

This is not your basic, run-of-the-mill poetry gig. Building on last year's experience, we should be in line for a real treat: A remarkable group of strong, diverse poets will be on hand, from the US and the UK. The festival is designed to bring out the best in each poet, and to fit it together with all the other riches on offer, in a way that everyone can access. Contact Richard Heley at heley@art-beat.in2home.co.uk or call 0207 286 1880.

Tongues and ears,

Tim Gibbard