Liars League, 10th February

Liars League is a storytelling night with class and one that recognizes the perhaps awkward truth that just because you can write a kick-ass story, doesn’t mean you’re any good at reading it aloud. So Liars League teams good story writers with good story tellers to create a night of tales that is top notch. Each performer is a genuine actor, turning each short piece of fiction into almost a one-person play. Accents are adopted, actions are played out, and you are completely sucked into the narrative.

Liars League is a monthly event at The Phoenix on Tuesdays (The Phoenix fast becoming a place my Meetup group goes to regularly) and each event has a theme. Writers are invited to send in their submissions and then these are vetted by the ‘Liars’ who run the league to pick the cream of the crop and the ones that will work best for the event. They have to bear in mind that someone actually has to read these stories aloud and make them believable. So, for an example of one that didn’t make the grade – someone had written a story all about a person who could do all these amazing impressions. But that would mean the actor needed to be able to do all these impressions so regardless of how good the plot was, it wouldn’t work in Liars League. Once they have the stories, they need to match them to the actors. Any accents that feature prove a strong point to consider – they had to draft someone in especially for one of the stories we saw as they realized they didn’t have anyone who could do a Scottish accent. But more than that they just seemed to match the personas of the stories to the performers incredibly well so that you couldn’t imagine any of the other performers there doing any other story.

They have six pieces per night and an interval after the first three, plus plenty of time to chat and hang around after (when I got to talking to the compere for the night, Liam, who is a writer himself. Never a storyteller apparently although he does a bang-up job of hosting in an amusingly arch manner).

For this event we had the theme The Beautiful and the Damned (it was close to Valentine’s Day) and so we had a range of love-themed stories with many a non-happy ending. First, Selkie, the eerie tale of the disappearance of a man and his entire family – had he married a silkie and they’d all been taken out to sea?

Next we had a unique and unsettling story of this poor sap who had a tendency to fall and fall hard for people who didn't return his feelings. His tendency to pour out his emotions in poetry lead to his exploitation to create renewable energy. There's nothing like the pent-up energy of unrequited love to create a source of power!

We also had the hilarious story of Ger Sheen and the Satanists involving a literal motherf*cker and a bunch of satanists terrorising a poor sheep farmer. There was the sweet love story Gerald the Absolute Swine who finally meets his match. The rather sad Lag, about a prisoner on day release to attend a uni reunion, seeing the now-married ex he still has feelings for. And even a wizard story on the origins of Guinevere's beauty. You can watch the performances of the stories, or just read them yourself here.

And just to keep it even more interesting, at the end of the break there is a short, literary quiz. With books for prizes of course! This time they were giving out tacky YA romance novels in the main although one ‘real’ book was also a prize. This was much more informal than I expected – if you knew the answer you just had to shout out as soon as you knew it, as they read out clues to the title. So even though I figured out a couple I wasn’t brazen enough to pipe up. 

Listen Softly London, 26th January

If you are a lover of words then you’re spoilt for choice in London. There is a litany of spoken word, poetry, literary and storytelling nights out there (and many of them have been blogged about by me). A fairly new arrival to the scene is Listen Softly London, run by Dominic Stevenson, in a room at the top of the Crown in Southwark. Dom works in the charity sector but still felt like he wasn’t doing enough good in the world and so decided to put on a spoken word event to raise some money for a good cause. When it was a success and someone asked him when the next one would be, it became a regular occurrence.

Dom curates four people who deal in the currency of words, as well as performing some of his own works. These are not the same people at each event and so subjective taste as well as their own objective talent will determine how much you enjoy it, but to go by the event I attended this is another gem in the literary crown of London.

First up we had Dan Carpenter reading an excerpt from a story in the collection After the Fall. I am convinced I have seen Dan read elsewhere but cannot figure out where. Anyway, this story concerned a world where technology was no more, a world where technology was viewed with suspicion and fear, by those who could even remember it. We didn’t find out why, and nor did we hear the entire story so we were left with our own unsettling imaginings as to what had gone wrong. Quite clever.

After a short break, Sarah Sheldon treated us to some of her ‘comedic storytelling’. In short, she is a standup comic but she has her own very unique delivery and stage persona. I know I won’t do it justice by describing it here but she had a sort of Charlie Brown resignation about her, in relation to the struggle that is ordinary life, as she told us about her favourite childhood stories of Topsy and Tim, envying both their companionship and their lives where nothing whatsoever interesting happened. She shared with us her fear of change, and how this has lead to an almost debilitating obsession with whether or not her boss was going to leave for a new job. And finally, we were introduced to her Jewish grandmother’s fixation on chairs. It was really funny, and I was really pleased to see a female comic given some floor time.

The last two acts were your ‘typical’ spoken word complete with the pattern and cadence familiar to anyone who has seen much of this. But that doesn’t mean they were old hat. Megan was, perhaps a little predictably, quite feminist (it just abounds in these circles) and started off with a bit of a rant inspired by Jay Z’s 99 Problems (she had 99 problems and the male construct anti-women society was one etc). Not all her pieces were quite so political though – she had a good old rant about couples snogging on the tube and also covered her sincere desire to be Maria from The Sound of Music when she was a little girl, and her feelings about leaving her student life behind. Before, finally, finishing on another feminist note inspired by Mary Beard. Her work was clever and witty with vocabulary any word lover would appreciate.

And finally, we had Dean McCaffrey. I must admit, I got a little distracted by his face and tats when I was trying to listen to his words but the story he was weaving eventually grabbed my attention. He started with quite a long piece about befriending a homeless guy who turned out to be something of a muse for him when he was but a young lad, as well as providing an introduction to the realities of homelessness that we all know exist. I’ve not really heard such a long piece of spoken word before. One of my Meetup members said it was Shakespearean but it reminded me more of an epic Homerian poem. He then rather shyly performed a rap for us as he is a rapper as well, though I must say, without background music the difference between rap and spoken word is ‘subtle’.

People were encouraged to stick around afterwards and have a chat, which added to the friendly and welcoming atmosphere. These nights are monthly and if you like this sort of thing, or want to find out if you do, then you should pop along some time.  

Stranger than Fiction, 7th May

Stranger than Fiction is a new literary night that brings together several elements to entertain you. Perhaps even, slightly too many elements, because I think by the end of the evening our attention spans had rather drifted, but it was still a really good evening and one I'd recommend to the literary lovers out there.

Predominantly (just) it’s a night of performance by writers and spoken word artists on a given theme. They can speak, emote or perform for 7 minutes and at the end the audience picks their favourite. This inaugural event chose First Love on which to linger and we had some excellent performers. First up was Gemma Weekes who did a spoken word piece which raised the hairs on the back of my neck about a love that might not have been her first, but was certainly seismic, and she also performed a song to a backing track, which was slightly less effective.

Our second performer was Rhodri Marsden, the winner of the evening, who charmed us with his tale of first love (well, second if you don’t count the Wombles) and how you can be so convinced someone is right for you (mainly because they are a girl, and in your vicinity) and then over the years discover just how wrong you can be. It was delivered with touching, and sometimes rather cutting, humour. For his troubles he was presented with a small, but life changing prize - a ukelele. Given that he professes to hate the instrument, it could indeed change his life should he choose to give it a chance.

The third performance was a comedic set from Grainne Maguire who supported Rob Delaney on his tour recently, which just proves Stranger than Fiction aren't pulling any old performers off the street. I really liked her tale of lusting after the boy who wasn’t interested, only for it to lead her to the guy she’d been ignoring who was right under her nose. The story ended with hands brushing and realisation beginning to stir…

And finally we had a piece from France, otherwise known as Dan Carpenter, who was participating in the United Nations (a field trip) and had a crush on the United States (a girl). Oh, how France believed that together, diplomacy could be more than made but for some reason the US just wasn't interested.

So with only four acts, the night was surprisingly varied. Interspersed with each performer, is a literary pub quiz of sorts. I love a pub quiz and this was the right level of challenging yet answerable. There were also two rounds which weren't your usual – one where our inimitable host Dixe Wills shouted out words or phrases that related to a book and whoever shouted out the answer first got the points. This is where I think we scored quite well, getting two of the answers, and depriving other teams of those much-needed points. Another round was for all those foreign candy bar lovers out there – deciding whether a flavour of Kit Kat was a real Japanese flavour or not. We scored abysmally here, only getting about half right.

Naturally there was a prize for the winner, and even the runners up, which I’m happy to say, was my team, after I delivered the tie-breaker answer. As a prize, we got a book. That's right one book to share between the six of us. Oh well - clearly it was meant as a symbol of winning rather than an actual prize. First prize was, of course, booze, as it always should be.


On top of this, running through the evening, we were encouraged to tweet our own mini-stories of first love, and then Dan Carpenter picked his favourite to also win a prize (or it might have just been recognition, my memory is a little hazy, and the night was wearing on).

I think they’ve got a good thing going here, and they’re doing enough to set them apart from the other literary nights already in existence. They are probably most similar to Literary Death Match but that can be a bit hit and miss whereas this, I think, actually delivers more interactivity, and more fun. The next Stranger than Fiction is scheduled for June 4th and promises to explore a person's 'darkest hour'...

Homework at The Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, 30th November

My friend Fiona who is a bit of a literary type (it helps, when you're in publishing) brought my attention to the fact that Homework was on that night and she was going, did I want to come? And it was the last Homework of the year. I had planned a relaxing night in with Stephen but it seemed a fitting end to my first enjoyable day of unemployment to go out for a drink or two. In a highbrowish kind of way. I am quite partial to a literary night myself, having been to several BookSlams over the last few years, and also one Literary Death Match and I always find them enjoyable. The added bonus of going to this one, of course (besides it being in Bethnal Green; only one tube stop away) was that I'd be killing two birds with one stone. Attending Homework and striking that off the list and seeing what the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club was like. 

Homework is a monthly night that runs from May(ish) until November(ish) every year which is put on by Aisle16. They are, in their own words 'a looser collective of writers sharing ideas and collaborating on projects as and when'. Although I guess 'as and when' has to coincide roughly with their commitments to Homework. Each Homework has a theme, and this month's theme was Poet in Residence.  The Aisle16 team had to take themselves out of their normal writing habitats and become 'poets in residence' of a different place (building/town/state of mind) of their choosing. 

We had actually seen three of the six poets before, at the aforementioned BookSlams. At first we were a little disappointed by this, although if I had bothered to do my research I would have realised it was inevitable that at least two of them would have been there, considering they are the founders. Last time we'd seen them Joe Dunthorne (author of Submarine) and Ross Sutherland, they had done an ill-concieved 'live poem writing' made up of tweets from the evening on a poem which had been projected onto a wall. 

I'm kinda glad I didn't look though, as it might have put me off - I like to see new people rather than pay to see people we've already experienced and that would have been a shame. Because I absolutely loved this night. The places the poets chose to go and be residence in ranged from a library in Bungay to Occupy LSE to Beachy Head. And the poems they wrote there were enraging, moving and hilarious. I don't think I have enjoyed any other literary night more. Fiona said that normally the subjects were a bit more lighthearted than they were that night but I didn't mind at all. It so happened that the 'heavier' things they touched upon were things I had become interested in myself recently. Well, things probably most of the audience were interested in - CEO pay, council cuts, the closure of libraries and er... suicide. But even addressing these serious issues, all the poets managed to sew in some amusement to the tapestry they were weaving and provide light relief. 

And, somewhat of a surprise, they managed to get a real life poet in residence - the ex-Poet Laureat himself - Andrew Motion to come along and do a reading. It was well worth a fiver.

But I am not only reviewing Homework but also the venue in which it was performed. The Working Men's Club. Do not be fooled into thinking this is just a trendy theme for a bar. There is no mistaking that this either still is, or was until very recently, a real working men's social club. It looks like one from the outside, and it smells like one on the inside. It comes complete with those funny sort of plush velvet-seated chairs, heavy drapes and a little bar in the hall manned by people who looked like they were more used to serving working men than a bunch of middle class people 'slumming it' to watch poetry and sip wine.

Given the milieu I wasn't sure if I trusted the quality of the wine and stuck to cider. Stephen was drinking blackcurrant and sodas. The round together cost me a fiver. That didn't seem so bad until I got a sight of the drinks list and saw that my cider was only £3.50. £1.50 for a blackcurrant and soda is a bit steep. 

The Working Men's Club plays host to many a different sort of night - karaoke, burlesque, electropop club nights, gay nights. I'd like to go back and see what it's like on a night when it really lets its hair down.