Join performance poets Emma Purshouse and Steve Pottinger for an afternoon workshop designed to increase confidence in sharing your poems/monologues/stories with an audience, including the opportunity to practise your mic technique in a supportive environment.  Bring along something to write with and on, plus three or four poems or other pieces that you'd be happy to read aloud (they don’t need to have been written by you, but it would be great if they are linked somehow to Shakespeare).

This workshop, part of Shakespeare in Sutton - FOLIO's fun festival for all, is aimed at anyone aged 16 or over. It will be fun, highly interactive and engaging! Participants will have the opportunity to perform their pieces (including if they are written by other people), if they wish to do so, at the Shakespeare in Sutton spoken word event, Mouthpieces, on Friday 29th April at 8pm at Highbury Theatre. Participants may choose to attend the festival’s morning workshop focussing on writing skills (rather than performance skills) if they wish to do so though this will require separate booking.

Emma Purshouse was born in Wolverhampton, and was the first poet laureate for the city. She is a freelance writer, performer and highly experienced workshop facilitator.

Emma is a poetry slam champion and performs regularly at spoken word nights and festivals far and wide, often using her native Black Country dialect in her work. Her appearances include, The Cheltenham Literature Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Much Wenlock Poetry Festival, Solfest, Latitude, Shambala and WOMAD. She has supported John Hegley, Holly McNish and Carol Ann Duffy.

Emma has undertaken poetry residencies for Wolverhampton Libraries, The New Vic Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent and The International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge.

She writes for both children and adults. In 2016, Emma’s first collection of children’s poetry was produced by Fair Acre Press. This dyslexia-friendly book is aimed at 6 to 11 year-olds and won the poetry section of the Rubery Book Award in 2016. Her most recent publication is ‘Close’ (Offa’s Press, 2018) which was also shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award in 2019.

In 2017 Emma won the ‘Making Waves’ international spoken word competition which was judged by Luke Wright. Her first novel was short-listed for the Mslexia unpublished novel prize. She is one of the writers chosen for the ‘Common People’ anthology in 2019.

Her debut novel Dogged came out with Ignite Books in 2021.

https://emmapurshouse.co.uk/

Steve Pottinger is a prize winning poet, author, and workshop facilitator, and a founding member of Wolverhampton arts collective Poets, Prattlers, and Pandemonialists. He’s an engaging and accomplished performer whose work has appeared in magazines and anthologies, and he’s a regular contributor to online poetry platforms. He’s performed at Ledbury and StAnza poetry festivals, at the Edinburgh Free Fringe, and in venues the length and breadth of the country, from Penzance up to Orkney. His sixth volume of poems, ‘thirty-one small acts of love and resistance’ is published by Ignite Books.

What other poets have to say about Steve:

‘muscular, passionate, emotional, rational, compassionate’ Brenda Read-Brown

‘pathos, grace, and stone-cold contempt for the powerful and immoral’ Laura Taylor

‘ready as needs be to caress or deck humanity in all its beautiful stupidity’ Jonny Fluffypunk

‘Bostin.’ Spoz.

https://stevepottinger.co.uk/

Videos

‘the ostentatious breastfeeder’: https://youtu.be/rO7viSywbJs

‘impulse’: https://youtu.be/bjY-amwxUAo

Photo by Eric Esma from Pexels

FOLIO is a grateful recipient of grants from the Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council, Active Arts - Sutton Arts Forum, Magic Little Grants and Making a Difference Locally (NISA), all of which (along with a great deal of community support-in-kind) has made the Shakespeare in Sutton festival possible.