The London Word Festival drew to a close this week with the Art of Storytelling at St Leonard's Church. Yet another story-filled sell out success, the show opened with a surprise 10 minute set from Daniel Kitson. Matthew Robins shared a science-fiction romantic shadow-opera and Terry Saunders premiered Six And A Half Loves, exploring the failures of the most perfect couples. Audience participation was encouraged through poignant installation, 'The Tree of Lost Things' whilst a poem comprised entirely of words ordered over the 'Chip Shop' counter - courtesy of Henningham Family Press - received its premiere, performed by Ian McMillan. A picture tells a thousand words so we're grateful to Alex Muller for capturing the event in photos here.
Next evening as a coda, the Festival co-hosted a civilised late at Barbican Art Gallery. Some prodigiously talented and articulate Barbican Young Poets performed works inspired by Ron Arad's 'Restless' exhibition, Found in Translation trio Ross Sutherland, Joe Dunthorne and Tim Clare gave us a taste of the Oulipo with a poem using only the vowel 'u', a fairy tale with all the nouns and verbs replaced with ones 23 below them in the dictionary and a song about a pig baby totally blurring the line between a French intellectual tradition and stand up comedy. Holding everything together was John Hegley, proffering riddles for pasta prizes, conjuring poems out of the Barbican's letters and lodging Arad inspired song 'Eddie don't like furniture' (ner ner ner ner ner ner neeeeer) as our earworm for the entire long weekend.
Congratulations to Sam, Marie and Tom on another cracking festival. Find out more at www.londonwordfestival.com or follow them @LDNWordFestival.
All photographs taken at The Art of Storytelling, St Leonard's Church by Alex Muller.
