Katelan Foisy, who epitomises New Libertinism, in action with eight cuts gallery and Year Zero for 2010's show Lilith Burning
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.
The New Libertine movement, if it can be labelled a movement, stands 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.
“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.
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)
2011 shows
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
coming in 2012
23 January, Afflecks, Manchester
The New Libertines
lucy ayrton
slam poet extraordinaire and co-host of Hammer and Tongue Oxford
Raven Dane
Irish/Welsh novelist Raven Dane has written the dark fantasy series; The Legacy of the Dark Kind, funny fantasy ; The Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire and alternative history ;Cyrus Darian and the Technomicron.
author of Verruca Music
commander-in-chief of the new libertine movement, author of The Zoom Zoom
words, music, and film
star of oxwords’ no reading alone and the life force of oxford creative writers
literary death match winner, author of the man who painted agnieszka’s shoes, contributor to transgressive anthologies. your mc for the night, and for your sins
federay holmes
Federay absolutely killed it at Stoke Newington!
Federay is an actor and writer. She is also Literary Associate for the Factory Theatre Company. Her short plays have been performed at the Hampstead Theatre, Hoxton Electricity Showrooms and also produced by the BBC. She mainly writes Literary Non-Fiction, her blog (Missing Cat) is to be found at http://federay.wordpress.com and she has just finished a memoir.
experimenter, word-twister, raconteur, friday flasher, typographer, author of A, B & E
renee sigel
wonderful poet and part of the ground-breaking art and poetry shawback redemptions collaboration
joan barbara simon
poetess, songwriter and novelist, Joan Barbara Simon is a woman of her word. The word is Love; to be sung without rancour as we distil life’s secrets and dispel its untruths lest they muddy our vision of who we Are. It is the first, the hardest step. But one day you be running…I try not to feel shame for any of the thoughts in my head, be they said out loud or further shrouded from prudish dissent. For who else but I must delve into my unspoken reality… not only look, but see, which treasures, which talents, have been given me.helen smith
Helen Smith
is a novelist and playwright. She is the author of Alison Wonderland, Being Light and the Miracle Inspector as well as children’s books and plays.
Clare Waters
Clare Waters will be part of our fabulous line-up
Clare Waters is a performance poet who writes on a range of topics, both earthly and metaphysical. She performs in London, Reading and Oxford – also recently at the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts – and is a regular tweeter and blogger. For this New Libertines Tour Clare is focussing on the theme of ‘The Dark and The Light’.
Venetia Welby
Author of Palabra
Anne Witchard teaches at the University of Westminster. She is the author of Thomas Burke’s Dark Chinoiserie: Limehouse Nights and the Queer Spell of Chinatown and co-editor of Gothic London: Place, Space and the Gothic Imagination. She is currently working on a book called Lao She, London and China’s Literary Revolution which aims to redress the sidelined story of China’s place in literary modernism.
with music from the one and only experimental electronic artist Rabid Gravy, the utterly unique To The Moon, and double bass phenomenon Susanna Starling, host of the legendary Queen of Clubs Cabaret
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