new renaissance one site

‘Poetry’s answer to Mark Thomas…expert performance skills’ Chortle

Pete The Temp (BA, MA, PhD, PDF) is a poet, a lover and a damn fine administrator.  Watch him solve the climate change using only his mouth!  High octane spoken word meets musical comedy, political commentary, and audience participation in this hour long show. 



14 and 16 May at 8pm: The Albany, Douglas Way, Deptford, London SE8 4AG Tickets £7/£5 BOOK TICKETS HERE

About Pete The Temp: Pete has shared a stage with Bill Bailey, Mark Thomas, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, John  Hegley, Elvis  McGonnagal and Howard Marx and performed at over 20 festivals – Edinburgh, Oxford, Bristol and Brighton Fringe - making him about as common a feature in a festival field as a porter loo.

Visit Pete's website HERE

Show produced by renaissance one, in association with Apples and Snakes, The Albany and the Cockpit Theatre, and is supported by Arts Council England.

Book tickets for 14 and 16 May at The Albany

Renaissance One in association with South Thames College and Wandworth Arts Festival 2012 presents an aspirational live public showcase of spoken word, song and music.

It presents a platform of South Thames learners in the Creative Industries department - writers, singers, rappers and performers - alongside professional artists ADISA, AOIFE MANNIX, JAMES INGHAM and host MELANIE ABRAHAMS. 

Friday 18 May 6pm – 8.30pm
Venue: South Thames College, Wandsworth High Street London SW18 2PP
Admission free, places limited BOOK A FREE TICKET

Visit the South Thames College and Wandsworth Arts Festival websites

"It's poetry, but not as you know it…amazing to listen to” The Guardian

Thursday 10 May 7.30pm at Rich Mix

Tongue Fu is a “Top performance poetry night” The Independent where poetry, storytelling and spoken word collide with improvised soundtracks from the Tongue Fu band and micro-films-on-the-fly by Dr Cuesta and Magic Marco.

Click here to join the Facebook page

The amazing spoken word line up includes:

John Sinclair - Pioneer, Jazz Writer, former manager of MC5, leader of White Panthers, a subject of John Lennon’s song and a ‘new poet’ of 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference alongside Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder et al.

Ross Sutherland – Twisted genius and wordsmith who’s worked with BBC Radio 4, The Science Museum, Warp Films and NME - one of the original members of acclaimed poetry collective Aisle 16.

Femi Martin – a Dickens 2012 Young Writer in Residence and experimenter with flash fiction -  recent gigs include The Royal Court and The Southbank.
Plus special guest Ilana Winterstein – 'Playwright, short story scribbler, performer and theatre maker’
+ Poet in Residence Shane Solanki
Hosted by Chris Redmond as heard on BBC Radio 4’s Pick Of The Week.

Tilt's LONDON LIMING explores and asserts a theme of INDEPENDENCE! through some of the best artists in spoken word, poetry & music: JOHN HEGLEY, HANNAH LOWE, JOHN AGARD, ROGER ROBINSON, SIMON MOLE, and live music (guitar) by JAMES INGHAM.  Co-hosted by Liming patron JOHN AGARD & MELANIE ABRAHAMS. Plus soca, Brazilian, reggae & dance tunes by DJ CLIFFY.  in a year in which many countries commemorate independence - Jamaica, Trinidad, Algeria, Rwanda & more this is an unmissable event! MORE INFO HERE

A new CREATIVE SALON for writers, practitioners and producers, offering a fun and relaxing forum with the emphasis on creativity, connecting and sharing skills, performance and experience.  The salon is aimed at the broad spectrum of people who work in literature and the artists - whether they are writers, producers, publishers, performers, speakers or up and coming talent.

Where and when: 7pm at Nottingham Playhouse, Wellington Circus, Nottingham NG1 5AF

It is a collaboration between renaissance one, Nottingham Playhouse, Writing East Midlands and Embrace Arts, and is part of a project developed by Jean 'Binta' Breeze and renaissance one which is funded by Arts Council England.

The presenters include poet and Mouthy Poets founder DEBORAH STEVENSON, arts & marketing consultant and producer TERRY ADAMS, poet, editor and community worker ALY STONEMAN and curator, business owner and producer MELANIE ABRAHAMS.

Book a free place here

A CREATIVE SALON for writers, practitioners and producers, offering a relaxing forum of creativity, making connections and the sharing of skills, performance and experience. 

When: 9 February  4pm – 6pm at Rich Mix

The February session featured presentations from writers & playwrights DEAN ATTA and DEANNA RODGER, poet & founder of Bang Said the Gun DAN COCKRILL, and fundraising consultant & former Deputy Education Manager at the Poetry Society, ANGEL DAHOUK.

How often? Every other month, the next salon is on 12 April 2012.

Book a free place here

Tilt’s London Liming teamed up with Come Rhyme With Me (Dean Atta and Deanna Rodger) to present an array of delicious spoken word, song and music appetisers and poetic main courses from the award-winning INUA ELLAMS, FLOetic Lara, JASMINE COORAY
, JAMES MASSIAH, MARIA FERGUSON & DOUGIE HASTINGS, and hosted by 
DEAN ATTA, DEANNA RODGER and MELANIE ABRAHAMS.
 Plus soca, Brazilian, reggae and dance tunes by DJ CLIFFY.  More info HERE

Tilt’s London Liming: where spoken word meets carnival is on 8 December 7.30pm at Rich Mix

featuring Michael Horovitz, Charlie Dark, Francesca Beard, Sureshot, James Ingham and host Melanie Abrahams. Music by DJ Cliffy.

MORE INFO HERE

renaissance one presents Grace Nichols and John Agard at the exciting Literary Leicester festival presented by the University of Leicester. From Guyana to the shores of England,Grace Nichols and John Agard have provided the world with an honest and searing insight into the poetry artform, their beloved country and Guyana's connection with the world. Both poets are studied on the GCSE curriculum.

Grace Nichols’s first poetry collection, ‘I is a Long-Memoried Woman’, was published in 1983 and won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize.

John Agard is a playwright, poet, short-story
and children’s writer. ‘The Young Inferno’ (2008), a
poetic reworking of Dante’s Infern for young people,
won the 2009 CLPE Poetry Award.

Time: 7.30pm - 8.30pm at the Peter Williams Lecture Theatre, Fielding Johnson Building South Wing, University of Leicester.

Tickets free and available from Embrace Arts on 0116 252 2455.  Event in association with the University of Leicester

Visit the Literary Leicester website

Monday 7 November 7pm at Free Word Centre

renaissance one with Peepal Tree, Bloodaxe and Free Word launched the first full-length poetry collections by Christian Campbell - 'Running The Dusk' - and Jacob Sam-La Rose - 'Breaking Silence'.  The evening offered readings by both poets of their new work and a Q & A, set within a salon style environment. 

Both poets are active, resonant and connecting within the international literature scene; they explore the poetry form, modernity and their Caribbean heritage and links, in ways that is invigorating to the poetry form, and its possibilities.

What they say...
“Running the Dusk gives us a new voice for Caribbean arts and letters...the gutsy work of a long-distance runner who possesses the wit and endurance, the staying power of authentic genius.”  Yusef Komunyakaa

About Jacob Sam-La Rose ‘Passionate about poetry and its power to change people’s lives, he’s a lesson to us all. He’s also a damn fine writer.’ Patrick Neate

Jacob Sam-La Rose has often been cited as ‘a one-man literary industry’ for his galvanising ethos within literature .  He is the Artistic Director of the London Teenage Poetry SLAM, an editor for flipped eye press and a facilitator of many literature and participation projects. His work has appeared in Identity Parade and Michael Rosen’s A-Z: The Best Children’s Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah, and his pamphlet Communion was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2006.

Christian Campbell studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and lives in Toronto.  He has received grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Arvon Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center and elsewhere.  He lives in Toronto. He was in England in 2011 as a winner of the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2010, one of the most important and established poetry awards in the UK.

IS IT SOMETHING I SAID? Comedians explore straight talking and taboo themes.

Outstanding comedians DAN ANTOPOLSKI (Dave Award Winner, Triple Perrier Award Nominee), SUSAN MURRAY (The Now Show, Jongleurs Competition), ROBIN INCE (Time Out Award & Chortle Award Winner) and poet and performer FRANCESCA BEARD explore straight talking and present new work in an intimate environment.

A part tribute to the searing honesty and political conviction of Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks and other outspoken figures and a part spoken word meets comedy experiment, the event is curated by producer Melanie Abrahams.

Find us on facebook and twitter TiltSpokenWd

more info on the show here

On 19 May renaissance one and Canongate launched Dan Rhode's Little Hands Clapping paperback, with readings by Dan and special guest writer/multimedia performer Barry Yourgrau

DAN RHODES is the author of five other books including Anthropology, Don’t Tell Me the Truth About Love and, writing as Danuta de Rhodes, The Little White Car. He has been named one of the Twenty Best of Young British Novelists by Granta magazine and one of the Best British Novelists Under Forty by the Daily Telegraph. In 2010 he won the E.M. Forster Award.

New York-based writer and multimedia performer BARRY YOURGRAU’s latest book is Gangster Fables, short stories with variations on gangster motifs and he is also published in Monkey Business: New Voices from Japan. He has performed on MTV and National Public Radio and his The Sadness of Sex movie has been an online success.

"I can never remember my dreams, so Barry Yourgrau's stories are a pretty good substitute" David Byrne

A renaissance one production in association with Canongate

Once upon a time, in a room above a German museum, there lived an old man...  A caretaker by day, by night he enjoys the sound of silence, broken only by the occasional crunch of a spider between his teeth.  However, the old man's solitude is disturbed as unusual activities at the museum start to attract attention. A pair of young and outrageously beautiful lovers, a baker's son with a passion for the euphonium, and a dog.

'Totally sick and brilliant in all the right ways. He sucks you into his world and before you know it, you’re willingly trapped. So very smart. I loved it' Douglas Coupland

“A macabre, brilliant and terrifying novel. Good strong stuff” Guardian

Read an interview with Dan Rhodes