Spoken Word At Strawberry Fair

Strawberry Fair returned to Midsummer Common for a day of free music entertainment and rogue aliens. Things got off to a great start on The Mad Hatters Stage with Cambridge's top spoken word acts. Members of Flack got things started with music and spoken word including a performance by Glen Hutchinson and Toby Peters perfectly blending music and poetry.

At 1pm Allographic's Fay Roberts took to the stage to introduce a terrific lineup of poets. J.S. Watts started with a set including poems from her pamphlet Steel Yard Sue. She was followed by two brilliant young performance poets Riaz Moola who you can hear on the latest show, and Nikki Marrone. Fenland poet laureates past and present followed: Leanne Moden with an entertaining set as always including a poem about a lover of biscuits and then her predecessor Elaine Ewart had some wonderful nature poems.

Rychard Carrington made a welcome appearance following a memorable set at Hammer and Tongue a couple of months ago. An unpredictable five minutes included silence, poppadoms and Mad Axe Magruder! Hayley Foster, one half of musical-spoken-word duo Fake Maria followed before I had the pleasure of reading a few poems to the sizable audience that had grown over the last hour.

Making the link from music to spoken word were duo the Antipoet. I've seen them many times and their jazzy double bass grooves and sharp-witted poems never fail to entertain.

Nearly two hours of quality entertainment and I'd only been to one stage. I went off to explore the other attractions of the day. In doing so I forgot all about the other big spoken word event, the Strawberry Fair Youth Slam. I missed out by all accounts. You can read Leanne Moden's report here.

It was great to see so many people enjoying spoken word at the fair. Hopefully there will be even more on the programme next year.