August 27, 2011 12.15 pm This story is over 151 months old

Lyric Lounge arrives in Lincoln

Lyric Lounge: Spoken word festival The Lyric Lounge will is taking centre stage at The Drill Hall.
Lyric Lounge: Jane Dunn, Kayleigh Bentley, Rosie Hollingworth, Beckie North and Katie Ridgway at the preview event

Spoken word festival The Lyric Lounge will is taking centre stage at The Drill Hall on Saturday 27 August.

The day-long festival aims to celebrate and promote the art of spoken word, through workshops and performances from a vibrant mixture of well-known artists and brand new talent.

Visitors can participate in various spoken word events throughout the day, which will be taking place in The Room Upstairs and the newly refurbished Café Bar.

Guests can enjoy an exciting combination of music, rhyme and lyrical prose, rounded off with an open mic session at 4pm.

Cultural Solutions creator and Lyric Lounge co-ordinator David Lambert discusses some of the events on offer and which he’s looking forward to the most.

“Charity Shop DJ really is something everyone must go to, whether you’re 15 or 50. Come along, dip into those vinyl racks; pick out a bit of Beach Boys or Abba. They’re guilty pleasures. I’m looking forward to that.

“There’s Lemn Sissay in the evening. Lemn is a bit special. He’s the granddaddy of the whole performance poetry and spoken word genre, even before it was a genre. It does give me goose pimples to think about it.”

The evening also boasts a spectacular line-up, with Sissay, Steve Cawte of Writers Collective, Chris ‘Ventriloquist’ Redmond, poet Michael Brome and Lincoln Youth Slam Group scheduled to perform. Playing alongside these artists is the Tongue Fu Band, described by Lambert as ‘a bunch of top musicians’.

“If you chuck them into the mix with all our talented young people who will be performing the work they’ve been doing over the last two months, we’re going to have a lot of fun tomorrow.”

At the Lyric Lounge Launch on Friday, August 26 several members of the Lincoln Slam Group performed their work as a sneak preview for Saturday’s main event. In the run up to the festival, the young artists discussed their nerves ahead of the show.

Beckie North (14) said: “I don’t really know what to expect because it’s such a unique thing. We haven’t really done anything like it before. I hope it will be really good. I’m a bit nervous and I hope I can remember my lines.”

Katie Ridgway (13) said: “I think it will be really good to see the audience’s reaction and how they respond to what we’ve done and what we’re saying, because we’ve got some really dark and unique things as well as really funny and crazy.”

Daytime events are free and begin at 11am and the evening event kicks off at 7:15pm. Evening tickets cost £3 and are available from the Drill Hall.