William Sutton's Blog, page 19

Valentine’s Day Massacre

St Valentine’s Massacre

Only a month to go. If you want to avoid the sugary sweet love stories and hopeless romantics of a traditional valentine’s event join us at the Square Tower on the 13th February. The St Valentine’s Massacre promises an evening of twisted tales of romance, revenge and regret.

The best of Portsmouth’s storytellers, poets and comedy artists will be there to entertain, charm and dismay you.

Grab a ticket now www.portsmouthbookfest.co.uk or pop in to any Portsmouth City library.

 

 

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26 Best of 2017 g: FerryTales

To see my way through the brightening January days, I’m reliving my best of 2017: shows, books, music, poetry, drawings and scribblings.

In May we performed at Portsmouth’s Square Tower to celebrate Ferry Tales.

Ferry Tales was a project uniting poets, musicians, writers and photographers from both sides of the Solent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, with events, exhibitions and workshops for local people on the theme of arrivals and departures in their lives.

Poets ROBYN BOLAM  and LYDIA FULLEYLOVE  joined MAGGIE SAWKINS and other Portsmouth poets for this unique celebration. Also appearing were singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, J.C GRIMSHAW who played with deep rooted passion. Brighton based singer songwriter DOM PRAG played gorgeous folk guitar.

In a workshop with Maggie near the King’s Theatre the previous autumn, I loved spinning off pictures and poetry to create our own Ferry Tales. We wrote about:

what you would tell a new arrival in Portsmouth (nice roast at Queen’s Hotel)
what you would leave behind as you got on the ferry (angst, my neighbour’s child’s dinosaur that roars)
what you would take with you (hope)

Taking a shape from Simon Armitage‘s poem Last Day on Planet Earth, we all contributed a line to our joint poem which I later made into a song: I performed ‘Last Day on Planet Portsmouth’ and you can hear it here on Soundcloud:

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26 Best of 2017 G for Gill, Katie, Speech Painter & People’s Lounge

To see my way through the brightening days of January, I’m reliving my best moments of 2017, including shows, books, music, drawings and scribblings.

Portsmouth Darkfest was a wonderful panorama of performance and creativity.

Dark Towns was a vivacious night at Front Room, Aurora, with poet Katie Gill sparkling, as she performed poems sound and sad, local and psychological, wise and witty, alchoholic and alchemical.

Katie Gill was also a great act at Victorious Festival, with her Pompey tales on the People’s Lounge stage. Front Room Takeover brought a cavalcade of music and poetry to the bright afternoon crowd, with Emily Priest hosting the floor spots, culminating in the Speech Painter’s storming rendition of The Twat in the Flat.

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26 Best of 2017 f: Fact, Fiction

Crime Fact, Crime Fiction

 

Only a few days earlier, Diana Bretherick hosted the wonderful Crime Fact, Crime Fiction day in Fareham’s Ashcroft Arts Centre, summoning a host of writers, crime writers, historians and experts, to lively panel debates on crimes from the historical to the hysterical.

The Theatre of Dark Encounters upped the ante with edgy performances of trials past.

I also loved Professor Patricia Pulham’s talk Sherlock Holmes Meet Dracula, drawing together strands of disparate culture and interpreting our fascination with these characters.

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26 Shows of 2017 a: Public Service Broadcasting

To see my way through the dark days of January, I’m going to relive my best moments of 2017, including shows, books, music, poetry, drawings and scribblings.

Public Service Broadcasting at the Pyramids, Nov 13. Wow.

Unprepossessing venue, yet this strange interactive psychedelic geek rock inspired not only us but the whole crowd. I bumped into a large man, cringing to see him turn to me; but he, not at all put out, said simply, “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

Every Valley charts the Welsh mining story from the evangelically progressive beginnings to the clashes that signalled the end, with videos mixing public service broadcasts, elegant graphical imaginings and live action on stage.

Uplifting. Invigorating. Enlightening. Have a listen.

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Save Blackwell’s Portsmouth

Blackwell’s Bookshop Portsmouth is to be closed. Portsmouth University is not renewing their lease (in favour of an ophthamology school shop front) and has not offered comparable premises.

Sign our Petition to keep Blackwell’s open.

I’ve written at length of the support from Blackwell’s as a Writers’ Hub, beyond the call of duty or even vocation. It has stretched to Victorian cocktails and devils-on-horseback for my book launch, to hefting boxes of books (and even chairs) around the city to support our shows, launches and performances, and to staying up all hours helping sign books for punters young and old at the Guildhall with his different pens for each type of books:

Guest Post: “Bookshop Bliss” by William Sutton

Jo and Brian

As we wait for the hatchet to fall, I just reflect on the many happy evenings I have shared with author and readers thanks to Joanna West and her crack(pot) team of booksellers:

Viva @BlackwellPorts. I’ve been to dozens and dozens of events they’ve supported: launches, author events, library tie-ins and BookFest extravaganzas.

Polly Morland


Matt Haig
Lynne Blackwood and writers from Closure
JS Law, Quentin Bates, Fergus McNeill, Coco P with my Tenacity Samba



  
Tom D Harris
Diana Bretherick’s Femmes Fatales, Steph Broadribb, Alis Hawkins, Liz Mistry, Cal Moriarty, Linda Strattman

  
VH Leslie, Dr Karl Bell, Professor Brad Beaven
Matt Wingett, Eilis Phillips
Orenda Books’ Gunnar Staalesen and Kati Hiekkapelto
Day of the Dead


Dark City
Crime Fact, Crime Fiction
Self-Publishing
Graham Hurley




World Book Day
and my own launches, i Devil, ii Flowers, iii Electricity:

 

and more and more and more.

Go on. Sign our Petition to keep Blackwell’s open. You know it makes sense for writers, readers and Portsmouth.

 

 

 

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Looking back on Portsmouth Darkfest 2017

There were gold faces, weird places, zombie chases, and worn laces.

Dark tunes, mad-eyed loons, historical dragoons and mephistophelean buffoons.

Addled brains, bloody stains, supernatural rains, and tales insane.

Congratulations to all on a wonderful Portsmouth Darkfest 2017. The madness extended across and beyond the city throughout and beyond November. Please answer and share our brief brief Audience Questionnaire, while DarkFest is still fresh in people’s minds:

Audience Questionnaire

Largely multiple choice or tick box. Do share it across your blogs, social media and to actual real people too.

I found myself saying Cure or Be Cured was the wildest night, but I also enjoyed hugely the talks at the Uni and the panel events in Fareham. Day of the Dead was a treat, as always, and I was really proud of the variety and magic of Dark Songs. Wonderful venues, welcoming hosts, up-for-it audiences, intelligent conversation, mad music, wild imaginings and more.

See you in 2018. If you know people who’d like to people involved, send them our way.

If you’ve any ideas of how to get funding/get organised, tell us.

In a breathless 6 minute interview with Rich of That’s Solent TV I manage to mention many of the wonderful events upcoming and creative minds involved in Portsmouth DarkFest17:

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Dark Larks

The first ten days of Portsmouth Darkfest have been full of wild larks and creative outpourings, not least Matt Wingett’s inspired outing as an Egyptian mummy haphazardly revivified for Freshers’ Week in Day of the Dead V: Blood Runs Thicker.



Well done, Diana Bretherick, for Crime Fact, Crime Fiction, at the Ashcroft Arts Centre, Fareham;

to Matt Wingett on his book launch of The Snow Witch;

Johnny Sackett and Roy Hanney for the wild extravagance of The Front Room : Cure or be Cured at Southsea Castle;

Mona King Creative studio for DarkFest design,

and James Waterfield for Dark Arts Exhibition launch.

 

 

I’m looking forward especially to:

Dark Songs ii: Dark & Twisted: Sun 12, wonderful songsmiths
Femmes Fatales 2: Thurs 23, crime novelists share secrets
Spring-heeled Jack Strikes Back! art workshop at Aspex
Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula
A Dark Twist on a spoken word and music, Wed 15, Dark City readings at Hunter Gatherer Coffee
Port Towns & Urban Cultures.

 

   

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DarkFest on That’s Solent

In a breathless 6 minute interview with Rich of That’s Solent TV I manage to mention many of the wonderful events upcoming and creative minds involved in Portsmouth DarkFest17:

Day of the Dead V: Blood Runs Thicker
Victorian Diagnoses (from Writing Edward King)
Supernatural Cities
Crime Fact, Crime Fiction, with Diana Bretherick
The Theatre of Dark Encounters
Spiritualist Talk
Paranormal Investigations
Book Launches (The Snow Witch)
Zombie Encounters
Murder Mysteries
Dark Arts Exhibition at Hunter Gatherer
The Front Room at Southsea Castle (Cure/Be Cured), Aurora (Dark Town/Port Town), and Hunter-Gatherer (
Portsmouth Writers’ Hub, spoken word events,
Spring-Heeled Jack Workshop at Aspex Gallery
Port Towns & Urban Cultures, Professor Brad Beaven
Spice Island
Portsmouth University

After which I was out of breath.

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Orpheus and the Spice Island Nymph

Chuffed to have hyperlocal heroes Star and Crescent publish my tale Orpheus and the Spice Island Nymph, first published in Portsmouth Fairy Tales collection.


 


‘“Finding things as is missing something of a speciality,” said Worm, “with a sideline in unfinding things as may be better off lost.”’



 


This mangled malodorous myth features my Titan Books detective #Lawless and his urchin collaborator Worm.
  


 


I performed it at The Subaquatic Steampunk Weekend a few weeks back at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, kindly supported by the good burghers of the Gosport Steampunk Society.


 


It’s a skew-whiffy take on the tale of the great musician who descends to rescue his dead wife from the Underworld, and is a companion piece to my second novel Lawless and the Flowers of Sin (more in That’s Solent interview).

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