Launch Night: The Poetry of Cambridge’s Walking Women

For book tickets, go here: http://walkingwithwomen.eventbrite.com
Shape East, Cambridge’s Built Environment and Architecture Centre is delighted to announce the launch event of its new Cambridge city tour: Walking with Women. The tour combines history, storytelling, poetry and photography to bring to life another side of our city’s great history: The Women.

To launch the tour, Shape East are holding a two week exhibition in Michaelhouse Cafe between Monday 21st January and Saturday 2nd February of the photography, poetry and design from the tour booklet. This will open with an evening of spoken word poetry and stories form the tour. The poets who have written pieces for the tour will all be performing, telling tales ranging from the squalid cages of Regent Street’s Spinning House to astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell’s stolen star-mapping. These are all professional spoken word artists, poets and storytellers and we are so excited to have them all under one roof for this event.

Poets on the night include:

Michelle Madsen:

Michelle is a poet, writer, journalist and food artist. The founder and host of Hammer and Tongue London, part of the UK’s largest slam poetry network, Michelle has featured on stages as far afield as San Francisco, Berlin and Aarhus and she made her small screen debut on the BBC’s Why Poetry Matters series in May 2009. Empassioned, cutting and electric, Michelle’s words conjure up the macabre and the glorious, and might, just might make you think.

Hollie McNish:

Hollie McNish is a published UK poet who has released two poetry albums, Touch and Push Kick, both to critical acclaim with the latter prized for contributions to maternal research by the University of London. She has appeared in venues as diverse as Glastonbury festival, Ronnie Scotts Jazz Bar, London’s Southbank Centre and Cambridge University, has been featured on Radio 4’s Poetry Diaries, Women’s Hour and BBC 2. Her first written collection, Papers, was published by Greenwich Exchange, London, in March 2012. She co-runs Page to Performance, a local poetry organisation.

Angela Brown:

Angela Brown is a storyteller, teacher, heritage education officer, poet and registered tour guide. She has worked with History off the Page in every kind of primary school in the UK, as well as in cathedrals, churches, sacred monuments, language schools, underground air raid shelters, historic houses, art galleries, national science and environment weeks and parks. She creates stories, poems and projects on a range of topics, from research to final performance.

Fay Roberts:

Born in 1975, Fay is a classically-trained singer from Cardiff who has been getting on stages since the early 80s. She was finally bitten by the performance poetry bug in Spring 2006 after a favour to a friend turned into a place in the final of a poetry slam. She has co-managed and co-hosted Poetry Kapow! (a series of live poetry events) in Milton Keynes, frequently performs across the Midlands and South East, and is part of a Milton Keynes poetry collective calling themselves Bardcore. She has been based in Cambridge since summer 2009, where she co-hosts the Cambridge chapter of Hammer & Tongue and her own poetry night allographic.

Jessie Durrant:

Jessie Durrant has been performing since 2010, and has been tearing up the East of England ever since with her raw rhythms and heartfelt lyrics. She has won the Peterborough Annual Speakeasy Slam and the Hammer & Tongue Cambridge Annual Slam Final. She is a joy to watch.
Exhibition and Guided Tours

The Walking with Women launch event will mark the beginning of an exhibition of the tour poetry and photography. This will be free to the public and take place between Monday 21st January and Saturday 2nd February everyday in the delicious Michaelhouse Cafe, Cambridge, open 8am – 5pm daily, except Sundays: http://www.michaelhousecafe.co.uk.

The exhibition will showcase the artwork, graphic design, poetry and photography of Walking with Women, all carried out by local female artists, writers and photographers.

As part of this exhibition, we will be running guided tours for groups of up to 15 people, including community groups, schools and youth groups. These will leave from outside Michaelhouse Cafe on Trinity Street at 10am and 2pm daily and will last approximately 90 minutes. Please see below for general costs.

Bookings must be made in advance so to ensure a place please contact Hollie on h.mcnish@shape-east.org.uk or 01223 462 606.