Magic, wonder and the power of stories: A Few Wise Words 2015
Lanterns, nighttime events, a river, a secret garden, and the opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the major stars of the literary world; it can only be the Arts Council England supported festival of poetry and storytelling - A Few Wise Words. Whether you want to be inspired by the […]
MEET OUR WISE WORDS TEAM
Ever wondered who’s behind Wise Words? Wonder no more: meet our lovely team below! BETH CUENCO Festival Director Beth is the founder and driving force behind Wise Words. She set up the festival in 2010, then called ‘Poetry City’ in an initiative to reawaken wonder and encourage curiosity by offering people innovative encounters with storytelling and poetry. […]
Xanthe Gresham Knight Answers Our 5 Questions
For many people if you say the word, ‘storytelling’, they presume it is for children. They imagine someone sitting reading aloud from a book or reciting a written text word for word. When we defined our Mission earlier this year we spent a long time debating whether we should describe ourselves as “…an arts organisation […]
Tokaido Road & Kate Romano Answers our 3 Questions
Hi Kate, thanks for talking to us! Firstly, what does your job involve as the producer of Tokaido Road? Two-and-a-bit years ago, when I started working on Tokaido Road, I wasn’t sure what a ‘producer’ really was. Even now, I suspect being a ‘producer’ means something different to anyone involved in putting things on and […]
A Little Surprise
Today I stumbled across an envelope with nothing but my name on the front. This was inside… A Few Wise Words - 2014 We prayed for three fine days of sun and clear blue skies to light our festival; and so it was, as citizens came out onto the streets to hear the poets joust […]
Nancy Gaffield Answers Our 5 Questions
Nancy Gaffield’s poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies, including The Forward Book of Poetry 2012. Her first book Tokaido Road was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was shortlisted for Forward Best First Collection Prize and won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 2011. We are delighted that Nancy is joining us at Wise Words to share an exploration […]
Sarah Salway Answers Our 5 Questions
Sarah describes herself on her twitter profile as “Novelist, journalist and poet. Garden history obsessive, feminist and very bad runner”. A characteristically self effacing summary of her achievements, passions, drive but also her ability to chuck caution to the wind - to hold up and celebrate the quirkier things in life. Oh and did I […]
Strong Together
Yesterday we took our three and a half year old son Jude to the Polling Station with us. Naturally curious, he asked what we were all doing and to clarify that he had understood correctly he said “So we are choosing the big boss of the whole country? - they had better be kind and good at […]
Invisible Kisses
Workers of Art were recently awarded funding from The Poetry School that made it possible for us to bring five artists together for a day to begin to explore how we might create a response to Lemn Sissay’s poem Invisible Kisses. The artists were singer-songwriter Emily Watts, dancers Khyle Eccles and Rachel Birch-Lawson, projection artist Pete Wallace and poet Lemn Sissay. […]
Invisible Kisses - the birth of the idea…
How the idea was born… Workers of Art first collaborated with Lemn Sissay in 2012 on a project called ‘Poetry Isle’, during which Lemn took up a residency in Thanet and wrote a poem inspired by its residents and their stories. A song, dance and an animated projection piece were created in response - each were then […]