“… life, literature, and the pursuit of happiness in the famous Troubadour cellar-club, London’s liveliest and best–loved poetry landmark since the 1950s …”
Former US Poet-Laureate Billy Collins on the Troubadour’s 60th birthday as a writer’s café…
Thanks to the zeal of its many managers and promoters, the Troubadour has evolved over its 60 year history from a hidden-away beatnik coffee house to a world famous center for the performance of music and poetry. Its walls have become storied, and if only the place had halls, they would be hallowed. The Troubadour was the scene of the first reading I gave in the UK, and I count myself among the long line of poets who are eager to return and darken its doorway again.
welcome
from Coffee-House Poetry organiser, Anne-Marie Fyfe
Programme change! Delighted to welcome Greta Stoddart back to the Troubadour stage in a line-up change for the whirling #poetrymonday carousel that is What We Should Have Said: (18 Nov).
This event is booking fast! Best to book now (via PayPal on #poetrymondays page).
With a background in theatre (a recent BBC Radio piece was Pick of the Week) Greta’s one of the stars of Michael Donaghy’s outstanding City University alumni & will weave words (to harmonies from composer Peter Foggitt) with Richard Douglas Pennant, & Stephen Sexton — whose Penguin debut was recently compared, in the Sunday Times to Seamus Heaney’s — plus 20 great Troubadour poets.
And great to welcome back What We Should Have Said’s resident wit, writer/actor/director Stuart Silver who missed the summer’s super-spoken-word-swirl due to TV/film commitments!
Season’s start is Mon 21 Oct, which is also poem-submission deadline so, between now & then, make sure you’ve submitted the pick of your summer crop to 2019’s Troubadour International Poetry Prize judged, this year by Pat Boran & Kathryn Maris.
And see you all in the cellar-club again for (see right) an amazing autumn season.
#sundaygallery classes - oct-dec 2019
sundays 12-4 pm: £35 at the troubadour
- advance booking only via PayPal or cheque to Coffee-House Poetry, PO Box 16210, LONDON W4 1ZP
- sun 20 oct, 12-4pm memory cloud: complexities of blue, poetry workshop with anne-marie fyfe
- sun 20 oct, 2.30-5pm, land of heart’s desire: wb yeats literary walk with cahal dallat
See full details of classes and workshops
next event
mondays 8-10 pm, £7 at the troubadour
for advance booking: pay via PayPal or cheque to Coffee-House Poetry, PO Box 16210, LONDON W4 1ZP
mon 21 oct: october revelations with richard scott, rebecca perry, hannah sullivan & lisa kelly plus 20 troubadours with new odes to autumn
Kicking off Keats’s season of mists & mellow with four happening poets —
- Londoner Richard Scott has won both Wasafiri New Writing Prize & 2016 Michael Marks Poetry Award: Soho (Faber, 2018) is his debut collection & he teaches at Faber Academy
- Rebecca Perry has worked in theatre in Slovenia & edits online journal Poems in Which; her first collection Beauty/Beauty (Bloodaxe, 2015) won the 2017 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize
- Hannah Sullivan studied at Harvard, taught in California & is Assoc. Prof. of English at New College, Oxford: her first collection Three Poems (Faber 2018) was awarded the TS Eliot Prize
- freelance journalist Lisa Kelly is half-Danish & half-deaf: A Map Towards Fluency (Carcanet, 2019) follows pamphlets Bloodhound in 2012 & Philip Levine’s Good Ear
- plus something autumnal from singer/guitarist Henry Fajemirokun
- plus 20 autumnal odes — reflections on summer’s-end or winter’s coming-in, post-holiday blues, memories of back-to-school, odes to fallen leaves, toast-&-honey, nuts, apples, fireworks — especially written for this October celebration by Troubadour regulars including Digby Howard, Mark Huband, Oliver Comins, Nic Stringer, Tessa Anslow, Dino Mahoney, Karen Littleton, Rachel Donati, Alice Thurling, Mary Muir, Michael Harris, Diana Pooley, Bernadette Reed, Michelle Penn, Tim Richardson, Gillie Robic, Iain Whiteley, Lesley Sharpe, Alex Josephy, Jo Roach & Tim Waller
#poetrymondays - oct-dec 2019
mondays 8-10 pm, £7 at the troubadour
for advance booking: pay via PayPal (on readings page) or cheque to Coffee-House Poetry at PO Box 16210, LONDON W4 1ZP
- mon 21 oct: october revelations with richard scott, rebecca perry, hannah sullivan & lisa kelly plus 20 troubadours with new odes to autumn
- mon 4 nov: behind the blue door with blue door press poets pamela johnson, jennifer grigg & jane kirwan, plus 20 troubadours with new poems on the subject of doors
- mon 18 nov: what we should have said: an entertaining, enlightening, innovative & unpredictable spoken-word shindig with stephen sexton, greta stoddart, richard douglas pennant, stuart silver & peter foggitt plus, before the break, 20 troubadours with new poems on the theme of words, spoken or unspoken
- mon 2 dec: over the rainbow, a multi-coloured end-of-season poetry-party celebration
See full details of poetry readings
