Lyric Lounge: Open Mic

The evening started with Mark Gwynne Jones’s show of poetry and storytelling called Woodworms! Mark had been working with schools in Nottingham over the past week including Emmanuel and Bluecoat, and a selection of the students performed the stories and poems they’d produced with him. An insight into the minds of teenagers, and really quite funny.

While all this kicked off, there was a storytelling taster workshop upstairs with Sophie Snell, who was teaching budding storytellers some of the key skills involved in orally telling a tale, which we’d hear later on in the evening.

Little Machine set up in the café bar of Contemporary - they were something special. Three English gentlemen jamming out like you’ve never seen before, suited and booted to the utmost level of fabulousness, all with the aura of the Mary Poppins character George Banks at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. They took traditional English poems and transformed them into songs, allowing us sheets of paper with the words written on them to follow the tune. Adaptations included Blake’s London, Duffy’s Mean Time and an extract from Chaucer’s The Summoner’s Tale. A delightful and interesting show with lashings of genius. Splendid.

Next up was the open mic, hosted by the wonderful Joel Stickley. To fire everyone up, the host himself did a few of his own poems using lots of alliteration, rhyme and humour that was easy on the ears and eagerly digested. His first poem swam around the topic of love, pointing out his complete and utter adoration for the woman a few doors down from him with a massive chin. Excellent.

The list of names soon padded out, one of which was Mouthy Poet Hayley Green, who performed her poem Burnt Crumbs with a poignant delivery that turned the whole room a cold shade of blue. The second Mouthy Poet, Jo Kelen recited a poem about goats, which seemed silly and light-hearted on the surface but, as she delved deeper, its political connotations elevated it as an allegory of society, yet retained a hilarious charm.

Danielle took to the mic with a poetic story about being able, removing her head scarf to bear her whole self in an admirable and moving showcase of self-acceptance. Leora recited something a little different – an ancient Chinese story about an emperor’s cunning plan to repel the invasion of his city. The way she carried the tale had the audience hooked, with the words memorised down to a T and perfect pauses.

Geoff came from the storytelling workshop to give us a modern day version of Cinderella and the Three Bears, where the bears jumped into a Ford Focus to Tesco and got back to find that Goldilocks had eaten all the porridge after giving it all a quick blast in the microwave. Absolutely hysterical and charming to hear. The third Mouthy Poet of the evening, Jeiran read a couple of poems from her phone including one about booking tickets to her first gig. Her “mosh pit in your stomach” line rang of a nail being thwarted on the head.

Blackdrop stalwart Michelle Mother Hubbard was a stand-out act, her Nottingham accent packing punches as she explored her relationship with her son through several poems, one of which was a tale mirroring Jack and the Beanstalk but set in St. Ann’s, with cannabis seeds for magic beans. Rachel Stone’s rapidly recited poem brimmed with strong metaphorical imagery, while Sam, who came soon after, used a more concrete style as she told the tale of her Irish immigrant dad and his struggle with coming to mainland England.

The headline act, Shonaleigh, is one of the leading storytellers in the UK and delivers Jewish folk-tales that have been passed down through families from ancient times. She explained the protocol – there are stories within stories within stories, and when a tangent pops up, the storyteller will announce “but that’s another story” and the audience must respond “for another time.” If someone wants to hear that story, they must shout up, and the tale will then twist in that direction.

Totally engrossed in Shonaleigh’s anecdotes, we were taken on journeys with unfaithful wives, a man’s obsession with the queen’s royal “tuckus” (arse in Yiddish) and a promise to a dark lord which couldn’t be kept. The act was something I’ve never quite experienced before and I would love to do so again – Shonaleigh had a jovial attitude which blazed through the fables and kept everyone on the edge of their seats.

To finish up the evening, another round of poetic warbling from Little Machine, and the deed was done. Overall, a highly entertaining evening I won’t be forgetting any time soon – we even got free cake.

Lyric Lounge took place at Nottingham Contemporary on Thursday 16 October as part of Festival of Words 2014

Lyric Lounge website
Festival of Words website