(Paul Askew delivers a unique performance at Not the Oxford Literary Festival 2012)
2013
20 April – 6.30pm Chipping Norton Literary Festival
8 June – Stoke Newington Literary Festival TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE – BOOK HERE, and please book soon – the past two years we have sold out
The New Libertines, are back at Stoke Newington for a third successive year, and this time they have something extra special for you. NOTHING TO SAY is a week-long event fusing the worlds of publishing, installation art, and spoken word to capture a vibrant moment in the life of the country’s literary underground. The show will feature work from the poets whose collections are being published as well as performances from spoken word’s finest, all in the uniquely blended New Libertines format that brings words to you in the manner of a beautifully crafted album.
The New Libertines stand for human experience in its glorious, messy, complex entirety, and stands against everything that is blank, bleak, and brutal, one dimensional or slick in contemporary culture, especially current literary culture. With roots that spread to burlesque, Beat, fin de siecle France and ecstatic mystics before slapping its influences around the face with a knuckle-dusting of postmodern wit and Modernist anger, New Libertinism is a celebration of light in dark corners, desire in the face of boredom, despair hidden beneath the underskirts of affluence – of everything it means to be human. This year our performers include Literary Death Match winner Dan Holloway, Tower Poetry Prize winner Emily Harrison, the MC of Oxford International Women’s Festival’s Aspire Fly poetry night Anna Hobson, former bard of Stony Stratford Danni Antagonist, current enfant terrible of the London spoken word scene Errol McGlashan, Editor-in-Chief of Lion Lounge Nikul Patel, co-hosts of Sadcore Dadwave metazen editor and Huffington Post columnist Sian S Rathore and slam champion Paul Askew, curator of Manchester’s Stirred Poetry Anna Percy, and Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Last March, a collection of poems commissioned by the Scott Polar Research Centre.
November – Woodstock Poetry Festival
Join us for our unique no headline/no support format of voices from across the whole gamut of the poetic spectrum where the only thing missing is poetry that’s glib or one dimensional.
(Anna Percy at our Afflecks show in Manchester last winter)
The New Libertines stand for human experience in its glorious, messy, complex entirity, and stands against everything that is blank, bleak, and brutal, one dimensional or slick in contemporary culture, especially current literary culture. With roots that spread to burlesque, Beat, fin de siecle France and ecstatic mystics before slapping its influences around the face with a knuckle-dusting of postmodern wit and Modernist anger, New Libertinism is a celebration of light in dark corners, desire in the face of boredom, despair hidden beneath the underskirts of affluence – of everything it means to be human.
DATES
Woodstock Poetry Festival, November 10th 2012 8.30, Methodist Church - tix £4. Coming from Oxford? Catch the 19.45 S3 bus from Gloucester Green Bay 8 – the venue is opposite the bus stop and the return bus, 21.52 is from outside the venue. There *is* a later bus, after 11pm, if you want to join us for a drink after. Facebook event and full details of all our performers here. A special welcome to the New Libertines line-up for poetry legend Pat Winslow.
Albion Beatnik Poetry Festival, 23rd November from 7.30pm, tix £1. We return to our spiritual home as part of the UK’s finest bookstore’s month long celebration of poetry (catch New Libertine regulars Dan Holloway and Paul Askew in concert with Beat legend Michael Horovitz on November 16th). Facebook event and full details of all our performers here. We are proud to welcome Warwick Words slam champion Kate Walton to the New Libertines fold.
Chipping Norton Literary Festival, April 20th 2013, 8.15pm, tix tbc. After playing to a fabulous full house as part of the Festival Fringe last year, we have been asked back as part of the Festival programme for 2013.
We’re afraid this isn’t the site for The Libertines 2011/12 tour, though we love Pete and Carl (best go to their website for that info, though we’d love you to hang around here).
(Anna McCrory at Chipping Norton Literary Festival Fringe)
The New Libertines is our touring troupe of troubadour tearaways, and we’ll be raising our underskirts at a venue near you any time now.
“We need writing that serves up the whole of life, in the smallest microcosms maybe, single truths told in single voices, but told in the full – the ugly and the beautiful; the hopeful and the despairing; the angry and the aspiring; that wrings art, words, life itself until they offer up every last secret, every hidden pain, every unexpected and delightful pleasure; that gives life in the full. Free from judgement. Free from taboo. Free from pretence.” (Dan Holloway, The New Libertines)
The New Libertines show presents a rapid fire smorgasbord of literary fabulousness in all its forms. We will be performing around the country in 2011 and 2012.
Our shows
2011
4 April 2011, Albion Beatnik Bookstore, Oxford, 6pm FREE (Not the Oxford Literary Festival)
4 June 2011, Stoke Newington Literary Festival, 4-6pm at Baby Bathhouse, entry £4 (SOLD OUT – THANK YOU!!!)
13 June 2011, Albion Beatnik Bookstore, Oxford, 6pm as part of Oxfinge, entry FREE
15 September, The Literature Lounge at Covent Garden Poetry Cafe
17 September, Pow-Wow Literary Festival
2012
23 January, Afflecks, Manchester
21 April Chipping Norton Literary Festival
3 June Stoke Newington Literary Festival
Woodstock Poetry Festival, November 10
WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THE NEW LIBERTINES
“Forget the ennui of the 9-5.
Stories of bingo, of sex, knife crime, coagulated time.
Performed with passion, physicality and style.
Let your bones submerge in this bath of finely spiced voices” (Daily Information, Oxford, on Oxfringe Read Full Review)
“a compelling kind of New Libertine vibe, and offer something different – perhaps more thoughtful – from some of Oxford’s more established open mikes. Well worth checking out.” (Daily Information on This Is Oxford Read Full Review)
“a brilliant night” (For Books’ Sake)
“While ‘The New Libertines’ sounds like a Granta style tag for a new movement, there was too much variety on show for the acts to be pigeonholed – it does appear to be a guarantee of a good night out though” (Workshy Fop)
“the most oh-wow-this-is-tops event of 2012″ (Fat Roland of Flashtag Manchester)
“quite fabulous” (Elizabeth Baines, author of The Birth Machine)
The New Libertines Roll of Honour
(MC Dan Holloway)
Danni Antagonist
Paul Askew
Lucy Ayrton
Elizabeth Baines
Sarah-Clare Conlon
Raven Dane
Hannah Elwick
Rachel Genn
Emily Harrison
federay holmes
Laura Jarrett
Anna McCrory
Clarissa Pabi
Anna Percy
Sian Rathore
Fay Roberts
Claire Robertson
Tina Sederholm
renee sigel
joan barbara simon
Helen Smith
Michael Stewart
Laila Sumpton
Claire Trevien
Kate Walton
Clare Waters
James Purcell Webster
Venetia Welby
Pat Winslow
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