Sophie McKeand
Saturday 2nd July 2011 - Folk By The Fire
One of the founders of theAbsurd.co.uk, Sophie also organises various events aimed at showcasing Wales's alternative musicians, poets and artists. The website also operates as a platform for promoting the alternative arts and culture of north Wales. Sophie has also worked with Academi to take the spoken word into high schools across the region in order to encourage our next generation to engage with poetry and the spoken word. As a performance poet Sophie has been fortunate enough to share the stage with a number of hugely influential poets including supporting the legendary Anthony Joseph, as well as supporting Patrick Jones at the Llangollen Fringe festival 2009 and Francesca Beard at Theatre Clwyd. Sophie was the Bangor Slam Champion 2008 and is the poet in residence at the Llangollen Pavilion for 2010.
Martin Daws
Saturday 2nd July 2011 - Folk By The Fire
Martin Daws' poetry leaps off the page to dance the electric slide round your living room and you can't help but follow. These words lead from the front, hitting you from every direction. The poems themselves walk you down Chicago backstreets in the dead of night through towers of slate covering Welsh villages from the effects of the present, and the stories themselves are as varied as the rhythms. A life lived around a love-affair with music and the culture of the African Diaspora has ended up in a collection tracing the two-step of a white man in love with hip-hop. The result is a raw honesty exploring themes of race and identity, how to tread that thin line between participating and exploiting. His poems dissolve completely the division between literature and song.
