How a Holmfirth musician battled the Brexit Blues with electronica and a sense of community. A new book tells the story of an underground revolution in music where no-one got rich or famous but everyone got happy. “The early days were like turning over a stone and finding this whole new world of music-making crawling underneath.“
On the Penistone train derailment, February 1916 When I look up at the seamed sky, the black teeth of girders, the cracks of fresh air, I think this is not an accident, but a moment of refusal, a point I can look on and describe in bricks of words, then knock down again before it […]
And will those winds from ‘58That blew Armada back to SpainNow make the wind turbines rotateAnd help us triumph once again? And will our Covid stance be seenAs something we should celebrate?We’re proud of everything we’ve been;Like the Olympics – we are great! Back in the war, amid the gloomA new Jerusalem was planned;So now […]
You Ask Me Where I Want to Live, My Love… by Steve Pottinger it can be the tundra, a desert, a forest, a boat high on a mountain or out on the coast an apartment, a terrace, a van or a castle, a tent, yurt, or igloo, it really don’t matter but it must be […]
If you’re a writer in dark times what do you write about? Most choose to write about the darkness and tell you little else apart from (a) how dark it is and (b) that darkness is very, very bad. However, Ossett poet Simon Widdop is bucking the trend. His new collection, Poet from the Black […]
There’s a lot to be said for raffles. In these times where arts funding has become national news, a poetry night that is in its tenth year, which has been funded by nothing grander than the humble tombola, is something to be celebrated. At the heart of Away With Words is Jim Higo, the Bard […]
A Barnsley spoken word artist has produced a poetic tribute to the town’s hospital volunteers. Jeff ‘Jethro’ Platts was asked by Barnsley Hospital Charity to produce the piece as a way of saying thank you to a much valued, but sometimes forgotten, group of people who have continued to give their time in a variety […]
“Put it away, put it away, put it away now!” Spoken word artist Rose Condo wants us to put away our phones. For an hour at least. In The Empathy Experiment, the Huddersfield-based poet’s third spoken word show, shortlisted for Best Spoken Word Show at the 2020 Saboteur Awards, she asks the audience to hand over […]
