Led & Hosted by Loud Poets chief, Kevin McLean, 10 spoken word artists summoned from a range of genres, stepped up to the mic this August 23rd. An audience of fans, & industry made this an opportunity for talent to stand forth, and be spotted.
Now, by the very nature of such a cabaret, it’s inevitable, or at least very likely that not every artist on the bill will ring each of our subjective bells. However, there’s few better ways to discover work you will love than nights such as these.
So for your delectation, the EIBF offered (and offers, on demand – click here): Bee Asha, BEMZ, Dave Hook, Gray Crosbie, Jo Gilbert, Mae Diansangu, Kevin P Gilday and Victoria McNulty.
The QR’s highlights were Kevin P Gilday, Victoria McNulty & Bee Asha (in no particular order). This isn’t to say their fellows in the line-up were below par, rather that this triumvirate spoke their truths with particular power.
Gilday is laser focussed on the issues impacting his local community: poverty, lack of care, callous government, privilege, and disenfranchisement, but deploys his righteous criticism with an abundance of wit, charm, and finely honed anger. ‘The Middle Aged White Man Blues’ are a deeply ironic, and funny elegy for entitlements lost; ‘This Excess Mortality’ is verse harnessed to rage against the horrifying statistics relentlessly attached to deprived neighbourhoods. Kevin also benefits from an assured stage presence, and a committed, but cleverly sculpted delivery.
McNulty by contrast takes her raging anger against the inhumanity of man against woman, and lets it burn, a furnace tempering the white hot words she smiths. It’s Scots verse, but the Scots of the Glaswegian street, not academicians. Turning Eve to Kane in response to Adam’s relentless toxicity, she exposes the latter, and empowers the former. There’s no artifice, just honesty.
Bee Asha, a poet and hip-hop artist, gave a gentler account than these other two, but her deeply personal explorations of trauma, and survival are simultaneously deeply touching, and immensely charming. Mixing sung, and spoken segments, she reaches for the inexpressible, and more impressively, catches it.
Now, each of those performing might well be the poet with the keys to your soul, so it would be well to watch the whole thing, and decide for yourself.
The Quinntessential Review sees no point in ascribing star evaluations to author events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Such events often succeed or fail based on audience performance as much as those involved in the formal Q&A segments. Further, authors are not performers, and as such, scoring their public performance seems a tad daft.
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