Tongue Fu: Featuring Chris Redmond and guests | 7:15pm - 8:15pm

Tongue Fu is part show - part experiment. One of the UK’s leading spoken word shows, it challenges poets, rappers and comedians to work with a crack team of improvising musicians, creating a spontaneous new performance each time.

“The leading spoken word show” The Metro
“Tongue Fu is at the high end of the scene” Time Out

“It’s poetry, but not as you know it…amazing” The Guardian

Chris Redmond started Tongue Fu in 2007 with bassist and composer Riian Vosloo (Nostalgia 77), in a room above The Betsy Trotwood in London’s Clerkenwell. They called together some poets, musicians and an audience, to find out what would happen if they cast their better judgement aside and put on a show with no rehearsal. Unsurprisingly it was a little shambolic, but amongst the chaos, they found the kernel of what’s turned out to be a very good idea.

Tongue Fu now hosts a regular packed residency at Rich Mix in Shoreditch and boasts a growing list of shows at London Wonderground on The Southbank, The Barbican, The Roundhouse, Royal Albert Hall’s Elgar Room, Glastonbury Festival, Latitude, Bestival, Cuirt and LINGO festivals in Ireland, FLUPP Lit. Festival in Brazil, a tour of South Africa and a five star run at Edinburgh Festival.

This year’s highlights include a show in the mainspace at The Roundhouse, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Edinburgh Book Festival and a tour and Edinburgh run of a brand new show called Animal, by Chris Redmond, Anna Freeman and the Tongue Fu Band. Which you can see at Wise Words before Tongue Fu! See HERE for details.

Tickets: £5 for Tongue Fu or £7.50 for Animal + Tongue Fu as a double bill.

TICKETS: The gardens really are a haven away from modern technology - once we are onsite we can’t sell tickets online. So from the moment the festival starts, all tickets have to be bought at our Ticket Office in the Secret Garden (Cash only please)