Customer Login

Lost password?

View your shopping cart

Festival

Contains Strong Language 2020

BBC Contains Strong Language

Wrecking Ball Press is delighted to partner with the BBC once again on BBC Contains Strong Language.

The partnership has seen three previous Contains Strong Language festivals delivered in Hull, from 2017-2019. For 2020, the UK’s largest festival of poetry and spoken word has relocated to Cumbria.

The festival takes place from September 25-27 at multiple locations that include Wordsworth Grasmere, Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness. Live coverage of the festival will see events on BBC Arts BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 with additional programmes on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds.

To find out more about Contains Strong Language 2020, view the brochure below and visit bbc.co.uk/containsstronglanguage, where you can also view highlights from previous festivals.

BBC Contains Strong Language is back

For the third year in a row, the BBC Contains Strong Language literature festival is running in Hull, co-directed by the BBC and us here at Wrecking Ball Press. It will take place the last weekend of September from 27th to 29th.

This third incarnation of Contains Strong Language promises to be the best yet. Like the past two years, it will combine established poets of global importance with Hull talent, such as the Scottish Makar Jackie Kay reading alongside Peter Knaggs on the Sunday at Hull Truck Theatre 4pm. The incoming Poet Laureate Simon Armitage will be returning to read from his latest collection on Sunday at 4pm Hull College and will also be working with local schools all week to format the performance Zoom!, combining poetry, dance, light and music (composed by John Harle) with an intergalactic theme, shown at Hull College on the Saturday 11am. Adding to the line-up of nationally acclaimed voices, the outgoing Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, will be performing at Hull College alongside two Laureate Choice poets on Sat 28th Sep 4-5pm.

You might remember that Editor Shane Rhodes headed to Indonesia in May 2018 to the Jakarta and Makassar International Writers Festival to form publishing networks. This link will see an exchange of poetry with poets arriving from Indonesia and Northwest Africa to share their work. Adil Latefi from Morroco will be running an interactive workshop with his translator on Saturday 28th at 1pm, with attendees taking part in creating a new translation. On Sunday at 11am there will be readings from the Indonesian poets and further discussion and practical insights into translating poetry, followed by the Indigenous Language Gala at 4pm. Languages closer to home will have their part with Welsh and Shaetlan – the native tongue of the Shetland Islands – featuring in the work of Rufus Mufasa and Roseanne Watt. This festival will be showcasing poetry as the varied and international art form it is, and an art that is increasingly important in a world facing international issues.

19 poets – The Hull 19 – will be resident in the city for three days, presenting special commissions, performances and readings. The entire BBC radio network will be covering the festival. Last year over 6.9 million people tuned in to listen across the weekend.

The festival’s directors are the BBC’s Susan Roberts (Editor Audio Drama and Radio 3’s The Verb) and Editor Shane Rhodes. “Contains Strong Language 2019 follows two extremely successful festivals held in Hull since 2017,” said Susan Roberts. “Once again we will present a packed programme of powerful, eclectic and visionary work that will resonate with audiences both live and via broadcast and online. This really is a celebration of the power of poetry and spoken word.”

Shane Rhodes commented on the continuity of presenting three festivals over three years. He added, “Hull was chosen as the location for the festival due to its vibrant, creative and innovative reputation as the nation’s poetry city. We’re continuing to build on two previous successful festivals that have left people with a hunger for more and we’re taking poetry and spoken word to a wide and growing audience. This year’s programme of work is ambitious and exciting.”

As previously, most events at BBC Contains Strong Language will be free to attend. Three paid evening events are available for booking here and the rest will go live at 10am 23rd Sep at hulltruck.co.uk. Keep a lookout on our social media for details of the festival events or get your hands on our brochure, which is now being distributed across the city.

Tickets at: bbccsl.eventbrite.com and hulltruck.co.uk/whats-on/

Contains Strong Language Returns in 2019

CSL 2018Contains Strong Language, the UK’s biggest poetry and performance festival of new writing, will return to Hull in 2019.

The third festival of its kind to be held in Hull in three years follows a successful return in September this year, which saw more than 30 events taking place in the city over three days, with leading poets and world-class spoken word artists taking to the stage alongside new voices.

Contains Strong Language 2018 was a partnership between the BBC, Wrecking Ball Press, Arts Council England, Absolutely Cultured, 14-18 NOW and the British Council. 

18 of the most interesting and diverse poets formed the Contains Strong Language company of artists. The Hull 18 brought new and existing poetry to the festival. The Hull 18 were Amanda Dalton, Jackie Kay, Simon Armitage, Louise Wallwein, Jacob Polley, Isaiah Hull, Vicky Foster, Joe Hakim, Shirley May, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Jay Bernard, Malika Booker, Kat François, Ishion Hutchinson, Jay T John, Charnell Lucien, Vladimir Lucien and Tanya Shirley.

In 2017 the festival took place for the first time in Hull as part of Hull’s UK City of Culture celebrations.

Programme details for 2019 will be revealed in the coming months but Contains Strong Language 2019 looks set to be the biggest event of its kind to date.

Sisters In Spitfires – A Free Poetry & Film Event

 

 sisters

 

Alison Hill & Ian Duhig.  

 Saturday 20 August , 7.30pm

Artlink Community Arts Centre Princes Avenue

Hull

HU5 3QP

TS Eliot Prize nominated poet Alison Hill will read from Sisters in Spitfires (Indigo Dreams, October 2015), her latest collection celebrating the women who flew with the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War.

‘This collection is a real labour of love – a celebration of the unsung heroines of the civilian organisation the ATA … Alison Hill has been meticulous in her research and as a result the women come vividly to life, all of them larger than life characters.’ 

Pippa Little, The Lake

Alison will be joined by Ian Duhig. Ian has won the National Poetry Competition twice, and also the Forward Prize for Best Poem. His collection, The Lammas Hireling, was the Poetry Book Society’s Choice for Summer 2003, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize for Best Collection.

We will screen Laura Mulvey’s 1980 film AMY! – an evocative and mesmerising film that enquires into what it means to be a heroine.

‘The film is not so much about Amy the woman as about the power of representations to fix the meaning of events. Amy becomes a legend that can be consumed and her action loses its subversive potential.’

Jane Clarke, Spare Rib.