Book Our Talent!

‘Utter!’ has, over the last five years, put on high-quality spoken word nights for institutions including the Hackney Empire, Whitechapel Art Gallery and Museum of London Docklands, Newington Green Now & Then project and the Building Exploratory. Many of our poets, storytellers and writers are available to book, individually or as part of an event lineup, from as little as £100. So whether you want to increase attendance at your institution, place a poet-in-residence, organise creative workshops in your business, run a MisGuided tour of your festival or area, or book entertainers with a difference for your staff party, festival or University event, our talent can entertain, educate and inspire. Read on, pick an artiste, then email richard-tyrone-jones@gmail.com (without hyphens) to see who’s best for your budget!

Richard Tyrone Jones Over the last 5 years Richard has built ‘Utter!’ into one of London’s top spoken word nights. His verse and short stories range from the acerbically satirical to the dangerously daft, and he has performed them at the O2 Wireless festival, Apples & Snakes, Hackney Empire and most of the UK’s major spoken word series. His first book ‘Germline’ was published in June. His comedy group Fat Fat Pope were tagged as ‘God’s gift to comedy’ and ‘uncompromisingly intelligent’ by the Observer, and Forward Prize winner Daljit Nagra described him as a ‘wonderful poet and host’, which is lucky, as he reads at and hosts most events.

Salena Godden is a cult poet, performer and writer from London. Her saucy stories and punk poetry have appeared in Dazed & Confused, Salzburg Review, Le Gun, Penguin’s IC3, Canongate’s Fire People, Serpents Tail’s Croatian Nights and Hodder & Stoughton’s Oral. Salena records and performs in ska-punk-breakbeat duo SaltPeter with Peter Coyte. Their album Hunger’s The Best Sauce was tipped for the Mercury prize and listed in The Independent on Sunday as one of the outstanding albums of 2007. Salena’s memoir, Springfield Road, will be published by HarperPress in Spring 2010. Fees £150-600 for weddings.

is a multilingual tour guide and poet who has been played on Radio 2 and performed at the Poetry Café’s Cellar, the O2 Wireless Festival, ‘Utter!’ and recited Poe, the book of Job, and ‘How Horatius held the bridge’ at the Arundel, and many other festivals. His own work is fanciful, cheeky, compassionate and always impeccably delivered. www.myspace.com/makepoetryhistory (London-based, will travel)

Tim Key Guest poet on Charlie Brooker’s ‘Screenwipe’, 2009 Edinburgh Comedy Award winner and part of BBC4 & Radio 4 sketch group ‘Cowards’, Tim has appeared at ‘Utter!’ many times over the years delivering his dark & deadpan poems on cavemen, suburban infidelity, animals he can fit into and old men who build sheds which then fall down. (London-based)

Kat Austen is ‘Utter!’s artist-in-residence, a mixed media visual artist passionate about environmental and societal issues, and bikes. She likes to give a new life to things other people discard (especially bike parts) by turning them into functional or beautiful pieces. You may have noticed her screeching to a halt in the middle of a busy London thoroughfare to brave the traffic and retrieve a stray bolt or screw. See her work on the facebook group and soon, here too. http://katausten.com (London-based)

Dzifa Benson has slickly delivered her smooth, sensual but political short stories and poems at Tate Britain, RADA, Glastonbury Festival, and Shakespeare & Company bookshop, Paris. Her work has been featured in Tell Tales short story anthology, the National Gallery website and podcast, the Guardian, Evening Standard, Philosophy Now magazine and as a playwright, at the Bush Theatre. In 2008 she was a core artist in Africa Beyond’s groundbreaking project Translations and was writer-in-residence at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2009. Widely experienced, she has run workshops, masterclasses and residencies at the Royal Geographical Society, British Library, Poetry Café, for Creative Partnerships in schools, for local authorities in libraries and community organisations and for corporate creative industries across a wide range of ages and abilities. (London-based)

Niall O’Sullivan As seen on the BBC as the Wimbledon Championships’ Poet-in-residence, and host of the the Poetry cafe’s long-running flagships Poetry Unplugged and The Cellar, Niall’s second book ‘Ventriloquism for Monkeys’ overflows with accessible and intelligent work which explores faith, the modern city and anthropolaelont- Paleoanthropolopo- er, ape men. Niall has extensive experience running schools workshops. (London-based)

John Hegley The UK’s most famous performance poet, with thirteen collections and innumerable appearances under his belt at the Secret Policeman’s Ball, Hackney Empire, and a Festival veteran. With poems and songs about Luton, dogs, potatoes and being half-French, John has appeared with us in London and Edinburgh reading from, amongst others, his Donut Press book ‘The Adventures of Monseiur Robinet’. (London-based)

Rich Sandling (aka ‘Spak Whitman’) Beatbox technician and hip-hop poet Spak Whitman tells it like it is to da kids on topics like drugs and politics. Learn the truth! Spak is, for some reason, never spotted in the same room as Rich Sandling, ‘So you think you’re funny?’ winner, movie reviewer and half of sell-out sketch group ‘Kiosk of Champions’. Spak gives us the truth! Here’s a video of him. (Essex/London-based)

Niall Spooner-Harvey 2004/5 UK slam champion, with his own book ‘Only not walking’ out with Smokestack, Niall is a poetry whirlwind who has appeared on ‘Scroobius Pip’s Poetry Surgery’ on Radio 1 and Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’, often indignantly satirical, but with a sensitive, affable and intelligent side. (London-based)

Tim Wells Editor of Rising, ‘the Readers’ Wives of Poetry Mags’ according to John Cooper Clarke, defiantly dapper Cockney gent Tim, profiled in the Guardian and nominated for the Forward prize, has delivered his tales of shootings in after-hours boozers, Carry-on style love poetry, reggae sound systems and pony suits on London buses on BBC 6 Music, the Latitude festival, and all over the world. His new book ‘Rougher Yet’ is out with Donut press. (London-based)

Ernesto the Naked Poet A hit on the gay and burlesque scenes from London to Madrid, yes, he gets naked. Luckily, he’s got excellent magical-realist poetry to back up the gimmick. (London-based)

OUTSIDE LONDON

Simon Munnery Festival and circuit stalwart, star of his own BBC2 show ‘Attention Scum’, and as seen on ‘Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle’, Simon has his own book of epigrams out and writes a regular column for literary magazine ‘Trespass’. (Bedfordshire/London-based)

Jude Simpson ‘She’s got words on a string like so many yoyos, and her lines sparkle with wit and panache’ – The Scotsman A cheeky but defiantly nice middle-class rapper, stand-up poet, musician, comic and author with appearances on BBC2, 4, World Service, BBC3 and more, Jude has completed three successful solo runs at the Edinburgh Festival, winning 4 star reviews in Three Weeks, Chortle and Skinnyfest, then touring the UK’s arts festivals and theatres.  Jude has won the Swindon Festival of Literature Poetry Slam, Edinburgh International Book Festival slam and the UK Allcomers Slam at the Cheltenham Literature Festival - the biggest slam in Europe. www.judesimpson.co.uk (Cambridge)

Luke Wright 4Talent award winner Luke Wright is the hardest working man in poetry, whether appearing on Newsnight Review, campaigning to become Oxford Chair of Poetry or Poet Laureate, programming and hosting Latitude’s poetry arena or as poet-in-residence on Radio 4’s Saturday Live. This year he penned all the poetry for Channel 4’s The Seven Ages of Love, broadcast to over a million, and performed his fifth Edinburgh show, The Petty Concerns of Luke Wright at 2009’s Fringe. www.lukewright.co.uk “The best young performance poet around.” - The Observer. “Visceral, poignant and riotously funny.” - The Scotsman (Norwich-based)

A.F. Harrold is an English poet with a comical beard who uniquely works in a wide range of styles – from comic verse (Postcards From The Hedgehog), through lively performance poetry and down to the considered and considerate love and nature poetry that appears in books such as Logic And The Heart. He has read and performed his work internationally – Paris, Copenhagen, Vancouver, Brisbane, LA – as well as at many major Literary and Poetry Festivals in the UK – Cheltenham, Swindon, Ledbury. In 2008 he was poet-in-residence for the Glastonbury Festival. Brian Patten has called him ‘An original’ and Bernard O’Donoghue declared him ‘Verbally scrupulous, exact and minutely observant. These poems are the real thing.’ His websites are www.afharrold.co.uk and www.myspace.com/afharrold

Hannah Walker was recently awarded a place on Escalator, a professional development scheme funded by Arts Council East, through which she is writing her first solo spoken word show investigating apology and its relationship to ego, passive aggression and sincerity. Her work has been likened to a poetry party in your cerebral cortex. She is working towards a collection called ‘you interrupt my brain sweetheart’. She is based in Norwich and likes it.

George Chopping beat 9 other heat-winners to become 2008’s ‘Utter!’ Paid Gig contest Champion with his witheringly funny haikus and longer poems on work as an ‘ambient replenishment assistant’ and life in Torquay. He has gone on to support John Hegley and others at many a gig across the UK. (Oxford-based)

Lee Nelson started performing things at people in about 1996. Since then he has appeared at Express Excess, The Poetry Cafe, TonsilTennis (which he co-organised) and the Glastonbury Festival (which he didn’t). Co-founder with RTJ of Utter! he has watched proudly while Rich did all the work to make it the huge hit it is today. Lee’s satirical poetry has, as he’s aged,  turned into a strange blend of whimsy and fury, published in Gargoyle and other small presses. Lee is a highly experienced and imaginative teacher of English & drama. (Luton-based)

Paula Varjack Paula is a jetsetting US/British poet, profiled in ExBerliner magazine. Her bright and witty poems explore being a girl caught between cities: ‘London that I’ve loved all of my life and Berlin my new home’. In London she’s performed at The Foundry, Poetry Café, 93feet east, Barden’s Boudoir, Farrago! (nominated for “Best Performance by an International Poet”); at Chicago’s Youth Chicago Authors, Chopin Theatre, Rec Room, Green Mill (where slam was born); and New York’s Bowery Poetry Club and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. In 2008 she premiered her first solo show ‘Kiss and Tell’ at Berlin’s 100 grad theatre festival. (Berlin-based, travels to the UK often)

Robin Cairns An incredibly charismatic, hilarious and confident performer of well-loved verse at gigs at ceilidhs across Scotland, Robin says: ‘Amid Glasgow’s literati I am fearless, I am tough / In cappuccino bars I bravely stand and read my stuff / If people do not listen, well, free speech is a survivor / And I defend it to the death! My booklet costs a fiver.’ “Did Robin really just say what I thought he said? Yes, he did! And wasn’t it funny!” - Poetry Scotland. (Glasgow-based)

Anita Govan, one of Scotland’s leading published performance poets, proves the personal is the political. She started the first Slams in Scotland, has run BigWord, BeatniX and now VoXboX poetry clubs and produced her multi-media poetry show & CD, Bare to the Bone. She has been on TV, been commissioned by BBC Radio to write and perform, appeared at festivals, venues, clubs, libraries and schools in the UK, Prague (via British Council), New York’s Bowery Poetry Café (via Scottish Arts Council) and the US National Poetry Slam (via NYC’s Nuyorican Poets Café.) In 2008 she received five and four star reviews for ‘PoeJazzi’ at the Fringe. ‘Warm and strong, beautiful words and evocative imagery’ - The Scotsman ‘These poems can be heard in their easy, loping rhythms and in the direct and pressing energy of Govan’s bright, glittering vocabulary’ - The Guardian (Edinburgh-based)

Tim Turnbull

Currently Writer in Residence at HMP Edinburgh, previously so at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Forward prize-nominated Tim was awarded the Arts Foundation’s £10,000 Performance Poetry Fellowship in 2006, winning ‘The Contenders’ contest at London’s South Bank Centre. Cussedly making no distinction between writing for stage and page, Tim is widely published in magazines and on the web. This dour Yorkshireman has taken his funny, formal verse to Germany’s Poesie der Nachbar Project, slams in America, won the inaugural Edinburgh Book Festival Slam and was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Bursary to complete his second collection, ‘Caligula on Ice’. He lives in Highland Perthshire and is married with a Westie. www.timturnbull.co.uk

Claire Askew Editor in Chief of ‘Read This’, Claire is a young Scottish poet published in The Edinburgh Review, The Herald, Textualities and Poetry Scotland, among others. She has won the 2008 Grierson Verse Prize and the Sloan Prize for Writing in Lowland Scots Vernacular, and appeared in the Scottish Poetry Library’s ‘20 Best Scottish Poets of 2008’. She also runs One Night Stanzas, an advice blog for emerging writers, and Read This Press, a new poetry pamphlet imprint. Claire lives in Edinburgh and lectures in English at Telford College there. www.readthismagazine.co.uk

Jenny Lindsay has delivered her political but humorous verse including her flagship ‘In Scotland, we know we’re fucked’ to impressed crowds at the Glastonbury, Edinburgh Fringe, Stanza and Edinburgh Book Festivals. For many years Jenny ran The Big Word, Scotland’s leading spoken word organisation in Edinburgh, and is presently studying Politics at the University of Stirling. (Edinburgh-based)

Rob A. Mackenzie Host and organizer of Edinburgh’s own regular spoken word night ‘Poetry at the…’, his understatedly witty debut collection ‘The Opposite of Cabbage’ is out with Salt Publishing (they of the viral ‘Just one book’ campaign). (Edinburgh-based)

Rapunzel Wizard is, despite his name, a bloke, who has performed at the Glastonbury, Edinburgh Fringe, Oxford Literary, and Brighton Fringe Festivals. A poetical representative of Brighton’s City of Culture Bid, he has won poetry slams around the UK with his sharply comic poems with a political edge. This led to him being called “The Beast from Brighton”; a good description until he moved to Aberdeen. In the Granite City he has received death threats while performing a poem about Margaret Thatcher, was listed in a student city guide as a “must see act”, hosts two regular performers’ nights and has been Chair of the Aberdeen Wordfringe Festival. Rapunzel finds poetry perfect for communicating succinctly without preaching, and in his spare time drinks real ale and digs his allotment. (Aberdeen-based, will travel around the UK)

Gavin Inglis A live fiction performer with his own show ‘UNDERWORD’ in the Edinburgh festival’s PBH Free Fringe, Gavin’s gothic tale for grumpy teenagers, Mirror Widow, beat 60 manuscripts to win an Edinburgh International Book Festival competition. Gavin has published a flash fiction collection, Crap Ghosts, been anthologized in ‘Nova Scotia’, among others, awarded a New Writers’ Bursary by the Scottish Arts Council, appeared on Radio Scotland and Leith FM, and teaches a night class in flash fiction at Edinburgh University. www.gavininglis.com “really knew one end of the stage from the other. Fabulous, twist-laden … delivered with confidence and wit.” - Evening News (Edinburgh-based)

Stephen Barnaby reads hilarious, exclusively 50-word short stories about, amongst other things, historical Impalers and pop stars and their carrier pigeons. (Edinburgh-based)

COMICS (who also do poetry)

James Kettle James Kettle, possibly the world’s most sardonic and bitter stand-up, also writes for the Guardian, is a novelist and sitcom writer, and pens poetry under the nom-de-plume of ‘Lucy Waterman’, a Goth librarian from Bicester. (London-based)

Simon Lilley Mixing word-play gags with solid, original and interesting material, sometimes fuelled by a sense of injustice, this amiable and laid back comedian’s occasional - often truncated - poems can say it best. “The highlight of the show…seek out more of his performances” - Edfringe.com (London-based)

Hannah George Paramount Comedy Student Comedian of the Year 2007, Hannah is penned verse especially for us at our Edinburgh ‘Comics do Poetry’ night, and went down a storm. (Isle of Wight-based, will travel)

MUSICIANS

The La de Dahs Finger snappin’ acapella close part harmony trio Grace Williamson, Claire Lawrence and Rachel Dawson formed in 2008, inspired by The Andrews and Puppini Sisters. These three friends sing modern day music from Radiohead’s Creep to Take That in a glorious 1940s style, along with original works from that era. www.myspace.com/theladedahs (London-based)

Paul Hawkins “Paul Hawkins sounds like no-one” - Artrocker magazine. “It seems to be customary to compare Hawkins to Nick Cave and Tom Waits. This does him a huge disservice; he’s a considerably more marginal and interesting figure than these decidedly mainstream oddballs” – Drunken Werewolf Magazine.

Young Dawkins Originally from Portsmouth New Hampshire, jazz beat poet Dawkins has headlined its leading venue many times, as well as playing Annual Festival Jazzmouth, sharing the stage with US laureate Billy Collins, Larry Simon and David Amram (who played with Kerouac at the very first Beat poetry peformance in New York in 1957).

K#nt & The Gang The Fiesta poet-in-residence described by the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker as ‘life-affirmingly puerile stuff, set to one of the most infectious and upbeat melodies imaginable’, K#nt delivered a slightly less sweary than usual set on our second Edinburgh Utter! Music special! www.kuntandthegang.co.uk