performance | applesandsnakesblog.org

Forked at Sea Change Festival – A Review by Seren Kiremitcioglu

This year Totnes held their very first Sea Change Festival. Hosted by Drift Record Store, it was the first of its kind to bring a host of artists and musicians to the small town of Totnes, and of course we at Apples and Snakes just had to be a part of the small revolution. We headed over to the Birdwood House on Saturday 27th August to present Forked with Mama Tokus, Rose Cook, Rob Barratt, Jackie Juno and Londoner headliner, Kayo Chingonyi!

Making my way on the train to …

Home Cooking: Swimming Home by Megan Garrett-Jones

Performance artist and occasional poet Megan Garrett-Jones embarked to have people swim the shortest distance between the UK and mainland Europe in a continuous loop on a small stretch of the Kent coast. A mere 20.6 miles!

Here she shares her writing tracking the process of this project and her explorations of the waters of the English Channel through swimming.

www.meggj.com | facebook

This is the fourth season of Home Cooking podcasts commissioned by Apples and Snakes and shifts focus to Europe, hear from poets and collectives across England.…

Rachel Long: Walking the SPINE of London Libraries

Rachel Long, SPINE Festival 2016’s Poet in Residence, takes to the blog to share her experiences of roaming London libraries, and creating a specially commissioned poem…

It was an honour to be invited to be this year’s SPINE Festival Poet in Residence. This meant that rather than being stationed in one library, I had the freedom to spread the SPINE Festival programme out on my bed like a map and plot a route of things to see and do in as many London libraries as I wished – the …

Archive Excavation – Zolan Quobble

We’re thrilled to receive funding from Heritage Lottery Fund to create an archive for spoken word. Over the coming months Archive Coordinator, Russell Thompson, will be bringing you the latest excavations from the Spoken Word Archive, as he uncovers rare sound and video recordings, photographs, and press cuttings, piecing together the artform’s exciting cultural heritage. So here’s the first #ArchiveExcavation to whet your appetite…

Welcome to the first Archive Excavation, our regular bulletin from the bowels of the archive cupboard. Each week we’ll dig up a flyer, a photo, …

Tees Women Poets Storm the Fine Art World – again!

Apples and Snakes’ Regional Co-ordinator, Kirsten Luckins talks to us about her time running workshops, making poetry and kicking some serious (eye) balls with the Tees Women Poets at the Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art (that’s ‘mima’ to you!)

It was a real pleasure for me and the Tees Women Poets to be involved in another mima exhibition last weekend, as we’d been hoping for a return ever since our highly successful performance in the Louise Bourgeois exhibition last year.

The fab curatorial team at mima invited us (and many …

A Lie

Hi, Francesca here, lurching out of my social media black-out cave (like Fight Club, but just me) to talk about my new show, A Lie. Honestly, it’s a misleading title. The show explores imagination, memory, language and the stories we tell about ourselves. It asks the question: ‘How do we know what is real and what is make believe?’

I haven’t yet been able to answer that question. Fortunately, I did find the answer to these questions:

‘What is the meaning of life?’
‘Who are we?’ and
‘What were we …

Picture the Poet in Sunderland: Sky Hawkins

Continuing on from the success of the National Portrait Gallery’s ‘Picture the Poet’ exhibition, we chatted with featured artist, Sky Hawkins, about her time facilitating student workshops at Sunderland College.

I was very excited when I was told I would be working with thirteen second year students from Sunderland College. They had all performed other people’s poetry but never their own. In six weeks, my job was to inspire them to write their own poetry for the first time and be ready to perform it and alongside …

Paula Varjack: Poet and Performer

Kicking off our Poet of the Month blog series for 2016 is the fabulous Paula Varjack. She tells us what she’s getting up to with all things poetry and performance…

Though I have been writing as long as I can remember, in a scene where most of my friends began performing in their teens or twenties, I started late. Last year, performing at Jibba Jabba in Newcastle (thanks to Apples and Snakes) I celebrated my 37th birthday, and was struck by the fact I had now been an artist …

Shagufta K: No Longer Is Writing A Lonely Business

Ahead of Public Address: The Soapbox Tour, ensemble artist Shagufta K talks to us about the importance of collaborative creative environments…

When I returned to writing after taking some maternity leave from my full time job, writing and motherhood seemed completely compatible. But after a few months of writing in isolation, at unsociable breastfeeding hours, in between baby naps and on Friday nights. It occurred to me that this idea that writers can write anywhere and everywhere is a myth. Yes there are times when inspiration hits you and you …

Dan Simpson: 5 Dos and 5 Don’ts from the Fringe

The second in our access-all-areas Fringe blog series, following Dan Simpson as he performs his new show Nerdsmith. Dan gives his ultimate tips to making the most of the Fringe as a performer.

Don’t do a brand new, unplanned, semi-improvised show in the first weekend with someone you’ve never performed with before: there’s enough to do to get into your own show without the stress of that ridiculous thing.
Do a brand new, unplanned, semi-improvised show in the first weekend with someone you’ve never performed with before: the Fringe is