Literature & Spoken Word

From the World Café on Central Drive to the Southbank Centre's New Poets Collective, local writer and community worker Rob Mason is telling Revoe's story on his own terms – in poetry, not poverty headlines. Revoe was once one of the most vibrant areas in town. Its history runs through many of the town's families and, without doubt, its people were the main proponents of the town's tourism offer. Its proximity to the promenade and the town centre made it a prime location for workers to live and raise families. You can still find Blackpool donkeys living up the alleyways…

Linda Hampton opened up about writing, publishing and imposter syndrome at a Leonard Cohen-inspired evening for her debut novel at Tea Amantes. Stephen Dunstan went along. I arrived at Tea Amantes Community Arts as Linda Hampton was putting real and chocolate oranges on the table. I'm not one to pass up a Chocolate Orange, but I was intrigued as to the connection with the debut novel we were gathering to discuss. The answer lay in Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, which features in Sailing To The Moon and includes a line about tea and oranges. The tea, in several varieties, was provided…

Titty Kaka’s Double Ds are built right into the title of her new book, Delusions of a Decade in Drag. In fact... that's Triple D’s. We’re already seeing how extra she is, and that’s before Kelly Robinson even mentions the front cover, where Titty serves double-page-spread glamour in her pink panther bodysuit encrusted with over 100,000 rhinestones. Commissioned as part of multi-artform festival Queer Amusements, which has brought together events, workshops, performances and more, all showcasing and celebrating queer culture in Blackpool and beyond, Delusions of a Decade in Drag sees Oliver Gregory (Titty) share details of his private life,…

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] A short story by by Mia Bleach When Dad told me that in London, September is a summer month, I didn’t believe him. We’d moved to the cold north when I was a baby, a place where the wind whipped my fine hair into cobwebs and the summer jackets were fleecelined. “September is vest weather – see!” said Dad. He showed me a photograph of a young man wearing sunglasses, a singlet and belted shorts, who resembled him. He was holding a chubby, smiling toddler in a sailor suit, who resembled me. Come my late-August birthday, the high-street shops…

Autumn Equinox is coming, and so is a special performance... Queer Amusements writer-in-residence Jane Claire Bradley is sharing brand new material developed during her residency. Once upon a pre-pandemic time, I did a lot of live performing. I hosted a monthly spoken word night, I performed at Edinburgh Fringe every year, and I headlined some incredible events and arts festivals all across the UK. Then we had a global pandemic and... in the three years between 2020 and 2023, I barely performed at all. My relationship with performing has changed a lot in the decade-plus that I’ve been doing it,…