TEXTOS SOBRE EL LONDON LITERATURE FESTIVAL

The London Literature Festival will take place from the 3rd to the 12th of June, this is the 6th annual festival and it will return to the Southbank Centre.

This year’s festival will consist of three broad strands: Capital Stories; Arab Revolutions; and poetry slam, Shake the Dust. This promises to be an unforgettable weekend of spoken word performance, with the highlight of this year festival will be a weekend-long poetry extravaganza with the culmination of Shake the Dust, the biggest youth poetry slam competition in the country, led by Saul Williams, one of the most influential voices on the international spoken word scene, and the UK’s very own rap battling, hip-hop MC Kate Tempest. There will be nine teams in total from across the country competing in the final.

Poet, playwright and Southbank Centre Associate Artist, Lemn Sissay, the first poet commissioned to write for the 2012 Olympics, welcomes some of the UK's top spoken word artists. Across the country, young Shake the Dust poets have been learning from the professionals. (El 6 de julio), it's the poet coaches' turn to show they can talk the talk. Nine exemplary artists take to the stage, blurring the line between page and performance in a medley of styles, poetics and regional accents. Joining them, all the way from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is a delegation from First Wave, the US's first spoken word and hip-hop university programme, to show us how it's done across the pond.

Author-journalists José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola) and Dinaw Mengestu (Ethiopia) explore -- in readings and discussion -- the limitations of borders in the imaginative landscape of the African writer. Agualusa's most recent work is My Father's Wives, a novel of music, magic and secrets, that travels from Angola, through Namibia and South Africa to Mozambique. Dinaw Mengestu is the author of Children of the Revolution, winner of The 2007 Guardian First Book Award in the UK and the Prix Femina Etranger in France, and How to Read the Air (2010).

Chaired by Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Ghana) whose novel, Tail of the Blue Bird, which was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Prize.


The Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival usually pulls in some big names and this year’s no exception… But there’s also some very interesting smaller events and a very strong London theme.                                   We very much recommend catching Icelandic novelist, poet and Oscar winner Sion, Nathan Penlington’s Choose Your Own Documentary (we enjoyed his show Uri and Me), Charlie Dark hosting short story writers battling it out at StorySLAM, a production based on the copy of Shakespeare smuggled into Robben Island, an unpublished Don DeLillo work performed and a free event about the poetry of motorways. For more poetry, head to Saul Williams and Kate Tempest, Lemn Sissay (pictured) or Tony Harrison.
                To make the point that this is the London Literature Festival, Londonist’s current favourite author Craig Taylor talks about his book Londoners, Andrew Martin presents a passenger’s history of the tube and there’s a talk about the London riots.