15th January 2019 marked twenty years since my first poetry gig. I’ve been building up to the anniversary for a few months now, spending my evenings alone with the dozens of box files of stuff I’ve collected over the years: flyers, newspaper articles, lanyards, photos. It was been emotional, neither happy nor sad, but just sort of full on. On…
Wednesday 7th November, 2018 As I getting ready to leave yesterday I met a bloke called Alan Greening. Alan rather marvellously appeared from a five foot wooden door next to the hearth. It looks like a cupboard door. How long had they kept this white-neared gentleman in there for? Actually it turns out the door was for a staircase and…
Tuesday 6th November You find me east of Ipswich this morning at The Ship Inn in Levington. It’s a lovely old boozer: thatched, big hearth with a large woodburner, polished oak L-shaped bar, red-tiled floor, open beams separating different section of the bar room. There’s also a ship’s wheel, resting on the floor and leant against the bar. It’s warm,…
19th October, 2018 A change of scenery today. I’ve driven about an hour and a half from Bungay, across Suffolk and into Cambridgeshire to The Black Horse in Dry Drayton. As I turned down the lane, at the end of which the pub and a village primary school are situated, my heart swelled. The pub is a beautiful building: freshly decked…
Thursday 18th October, 2018 I find myself back at The Crown in Southwold this afternoon. I’ve chosen to come a little later in the day, at the end of the lunch period. Pubs would traditionally close at this time of day, the demand of licensing laws, and a lot of rural pubs still do. You can see why: The Crown…
Tuesday 16 October 2018 So, here we go. This is first of ten blogs I will be writing from the pub. Yes, after twenty years of writing, performing, teaching, and curating poetry I have finally managed to contrive a way of being paid to go down the pub. God bless The Inn Crowd scheme. It’s all coming up Luke.…
I was involved in a really interesting project in Norwich this summer. Talking Statues invites writers to write monologues for various statues around the city. People are then invited to scan the code or follow the link and you can listen to the monologue on your phone. I really loved the idea and was delighted when they asked me to…
This summer I’ll be doing a series of gigs in pubs. It’s part of the Inn Crowd scheme, which I talk more about here. This isn’t a new show, it’s a best of set really, but there will be a few new poems chucked in for good measure. I’ve done this hour 3 times now and it’s gone really well. The…
Here’s a poem I wrote for the opening of the new children’s section at Bungay Library a few years back. Someone asked for it this week, and I thought it would be nice to have it back out in the world. Enjoy, kids. Boden and The Library Most would say that Boden was a naughty child and that’s because he…
We have six more shows of Frankie Vah left at Soho Theatre. We’ve had a great run, with some excellent reviews. Still some tickets left – click click buy buy. Recent reviews please note – some reviews do not give ★ ratings “Wright is a clever playwright and a charismatic performer … Frankie Vah is all the richer for its political…