Loud Poets: Best of Fringe – Edinburgh Fringe 2022 Review

Three talented poets, a mic, and their verse, in short, a great time for lovers of the spoken word.

📍Scottish Storytelling Centre
📅 Aug 5-6, 11-13, 18-20, 25-28
🕖 Time vary
🕖 Running time (approx.): 1 hour
👥 Creators/Producers: Loud Poets
🗣️ Poets: Imogen Stirling, Nasim Rebecca Asl, Ben Norris
🎙️ Host: Kevin Mclean
💰 From £10.00 (£16 double-bill tickets available on relevant nights)
🎂 14+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilet, Audio Enhancements

The Loud Poets have been championing poetry, and the spoken word in Edinburgh since 2014, and during Fringe season they put their weekly gig at The Scottish Storytelling Centre on steroids and squeeze 20 sessions into the space before August 28th.

The QR rocked up to episode 1, the first of a double bill to kick things off on the 5th. The redoubtable Kevin McLean makes a stellar host with the most, a bearded evangelist for all things spoken word.

The format is clean, and simple: 3 poets, an audience, a microphone. Each is given a turn to introduce themselves (mostly through poetry), before a sandwich filling poetry karaoke session challenging the trio to shoe-horn a poem into a randomly selected prompt. Closing things out, each is given a 10 minute headline slot to fill the audience’s boot with, you guessed it, more poetry.

Obviously, this review only pertains to this first session – as of the time of publication, no poet is scheduled to appear more than once this month. First up was playwright (and poet obviously!), Ben Norris, reading from his quietly powerful pamphlet, ‘Some Ending’. His set, constructed around his parents’ separation, his mother’s infidelity, and building/re-building relationships in the aftermath was sensational.

His style almost conversational, and yet laced with the timing of a seasoned stand-up, Ben’s conflicted, confused, but heartfelt quest for human connection yielded moments both sweet, and painful, tracing the border betwixt tragedy and comedy.

Ben’s debut play, ‘Autopilot’, is premiering at this year’s Fringe, and on the evidence of his verse, one might reasonably expect great things indeed.

Geordie-Persian poet (obviously!) and Glasgow based journalist Nasim Rebecca Asl stepped up second, her set a deeply introspective and cerebral study in identity. Quiet, and measured, Asl has a confident presence, lacing her work with Persian words without translation in the most part. For non-speakers then, some words exist as a mysterious music to watch her verse go by.

Completing the trio was theatre maker, and poet (obviously!), Imogen Stirling. A multi-modal performer, her verse often dipping in and out of song, Stirling came armed with her newest book, Love the Sinner. A modern re-construction of the seven deadly sins, the verse is intensely relatable, and her performance more than a little accomplished.

Ending with her take on ‘Wrath’, a superb interrogation of the conflicting messages sent to women every day, and of the anger born of that friction, she also demonstrated a fine instinct for closing out a show with a bang.

The QR sees no value in star-rating a show which changes not only its line-up, but all of its content ever night.