It’s poetry but not as you know it!

THE first event of this year’s Thame Arts and Literary Festival will be an evening with Roger McGough CBE, one of Britain’s best-loved poets and presenter of Radio 4’s Poetry Please, who will be visiting Thame on Wednesday, October 12. For this unmissable show he will be joined by LiTTLe MaCHiNe, whose setting of vintage, classic and surprising poems to music has earned them a global reputation.

Roger McGough – image by Colin Clarke (ARPS)

From Lily the Pink and The Aintree Iron to his Molière adaptations for English Touring Theatre, Roger McGough’s work spans five decades and includes many poetry collections for all ages. Described as ‘the patron saint of poetry’ by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, his latest book, It Never Rains, features a new selection of comic verse, accompanied by his own drawings.

Appearing in a full show, following their sell-out event at Thame Arts & Literature Festival (TAL) last year, are LiTTLe MaCHiNe – Walter Wray , Steve Halliwell and Chris Hardy. This follows numerous appearances at literary festivals in the UK and abroad, including The Hay Festival 2016 with Roger McGough. Drawing on three thousand years of poetry, LiTTLe MaCHiNe set poems to music and perform them with energy, passion, humour and wit. They have performed with many of the UK’s best-known poets, including Carol Ann Duffy, John Cooper-Clarke and John Hegley.

An Evening with Roger McGough and LiTTLe MaCHiNe’  will be  at the Spread Eagle Hotel, Thame, Oxfordshire OX9 2BW

Tickets can be purchased online at www.talfestival.org  or by phone on 0871 288 3420 (calls 8p per minute) at £17 full price, £15 concessions. Visit www.talfestival.org for details of the exciting line-up for TAL 2016. More events will be added over the next few weeks. The full programme is available in July. General booking opens 1st September.