Spoken Word

Quines
★★★☆☆ Poetic history:
Quines from Gerda Stevenson at Paradise in the Vault is one of those home-grown, quietly accomplished shows that will never hit the headlines but are the backbone of the Fringe.

Electric Contact – A Jazz Tribute to Tom McGrath
★★★★★ Explored:
Three Thomases – Tom, Tommie and Tam – got the Edinburgh International Film Festival’s retrospective tribute to the late, great Tom McGrath off to a belter of a start on Friday night.

Science festival Theatre
The Ideas Factory in performance:
This year’s Edinburgh Science Festival has been launched as the Ideas Factory, a hub for information, ideas and innovation, taking place in Edinburgh from Friday 4 to Sunday 19 April 2015.

Wordly Wise: As one door closes?
It is a sad day at Æ, where our resident poet, the one and only J. A. Sutherland, has decided that he will have to cease being resident. So here, for the May Day weekend, he says adieu or, we hope, à la prochaine.

Giving Voice – Wordly Wisdom for All
For his round-up of spoken word events during the last weeks of April, resident poet J. A. Sutherland looks at events drowned out by the louder voices – in particular, those that don’t claim to be ‘spoken word’ but in which words are spoken and/or read aloud.

Wordly Wisdom: Read or recited – it’s all performed
Jem Rolls’ recent comments to Æ concerning performance poetry and the art of reading have caused a right stramash among Edingurgh’s poetry peeps these past few weeks. Resident spoken wordsmith J. A. Sutherland has penned a riposte.

Slam poet slams scene’s “aesthetic regression”
Veteran performance poet Jem Rolls is to hold a workshop on his chosen artform on April 6 at the McDonald Road library.

Wordly wisdom: Ancient and Modern
Do the old pooches of poetry need to practice new tricks – or are the whelps of spoken word digging up a well-gnawed bone? Resident spoken wordsmith J. A. Sutherland ponders such things – and lists Edinburgh’s spoken word events for March.

Flyte to the finish
Leith’s Percy Poets have had to call it a night after their eponymous pub, the Persevere on Easter Road, turned its lounge over completely to the provision of provender.