There’s another powerful line-up of poetry and music on offer at this month’s Spotlight Club (Friday 21 November) at the Yorkshire House, Lancaster, with some of the area’s top-notch writer’s and performers.
Poet Marvin Cheeseman (www.marvincheeseman.com) made his debut as a comedy performance poet in 1998 at Manchester’s Frog and Bucket comedy club. The following year, after winning several poetry slams, he was featured in the Manchester Poetry Festival. 2000 saw the release of his first poetry collection Full Metal Jacket Potato published by The Bad Press, which led to appearances at a range of festivals and comedy venues around the country, including four separate appearances at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature.
Over the last five years Marvin’s work has featured on BBC Radio 1, 2 and 4 and he appeared on the BBC television poetry series Whine Gums. He has published a limerick collection entitled Making Prawn Sandwiches for Roy Keane and a new book We Hate It When Our Ex-Lodgers Become Successful earlier this year.
Mihkel Hassan is 21, born in Salford, and is a Hip Hop street poet currently a student at the University of Cumbria, studying youth and community development and also working as a youth worker.
“I started writing poetry when I was nine years old, and when I was 13 started rapping, which later developed into hip hop street poetry,” he says. “My debut performance was at the Spotlight last November.
My influences are 2pac Shakur, Eminem, Byron Vincent, my friends and family, and what I view round me.
“My poetry is political,” he reveals. “It challenges the government and questions society. I feel blessed, coming from a council estate and to be so young, and having the opportunity to express and represent the people is amazing.”
Kim Moore has recently had poems accepted in Obsessed with Pipework and Brittle Star and a web e-zine, Pomegranate for writers under thirty. She is in her first year of an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and works as a full time peripatetic brass teacher for Cumbria Music Service. “I like to write poems about people/relationships and I’ve been writing for about two years.”
Viki Lawless recently completed a Masters degree in Writing Studies and is working on her first collection. Her favourite poets include Selima Hill, Anne Michaels and Michael Donaghy.
The event also features music from Stuart Anthony and Mollie Baxter. Stuart writes and performs moving songs that lead you into his honest perceptions & emotions of love and life. His debut album The Colourful Truth is describes as a tour de force of original songwriting, emotional vocal delivery and beautiful guitars, dominated by 12 & 6 String Acoustic.
Mollie Baxter lists her influences as: Coffee, Dylan, Morrisons, snails, slut’s wool, Cat Power, Tori Amos, scales, Koji Suzuki, the Gothic, hunger, prevarication, Erin Mckeown, tupperware skies, Johnny Cash, PJ Harvey, Jeff (sweating like a June bride) Buckley, Julianne Moore, Carrie Ann Moss, Julia Cameron, Janet Burroway, Monkeyrack Writers, Spotlight, mashed potato, bus seats, found things, lists of things to do, morning pages, a nice cup of tea and a sit down, radio 4, orange and silver, the tides, Haruki Murakami, Studio Ghibli and Polaroids…
Compered by Simon Baker the literary parade kicks off at 8.30pm with an Open Mic from 8.45 – 9.15pm. Admission: £3/£2 (Conc.).
Web LInk: www.spotlightlancaster.co.uk If you want to book an Open Mic spot, e-mail: spotlightclub@btinternet.com