Rough Draft in Leicester

Here (below) is information from the organisers of "Rough Draft," a bi-monthly event for writers held in Leicester. MA Creative Writing student Anna Walsh says of the event: "I enjoy trying out my new writing at Rough Draft. It's such a supportive setting for connecting with other Creatives and getting feedback on developing ideas."

We love new stuff. We can’t get enough of it. From gut-wrenching theatre to side-splitting comedy, melodic music to punchy poetry, and all those arty bits in between, we love seeing all the new and exciting things that fall out of those creative brains. But more often than not, the first stumbling block when making something new is getting it seen, finding out if it works, and finding people to help you make it.

Enter Rough Draft. Put together by a handful of Leicester creatives, Rough Draft is a platform for artists to do just that.

Once every two months we hold our scratch nights, and programme three artists who each get fifteen minutes to share their work, be that script in hand or something more polished. We then chat with the audience, ask questions, get answers (or we have paper forms too).

Rough Draft is free to attend and open to all. If you would like to be involved, come along to one of the nights and chat to our team, or pop us an email at roughdraft.le@gmail.com

We'll be changing things up in 2025 by hosting our nights every other month! We'll be kicking off in January with our Leicester Comedy Festival Special and then we'll be back with you in March - which is already fully booked by the way. 

If you're working on anything new and would like constructive feedback from a supportive audience of peers, we next have availability at our May night - So get in touch to book your spot! Our upcoming nights are January 28th, March 25th, May 27th 2025. 

Find out more on our Facebook page here. 

Run Your Tongue: Spoken Word Night

By Rob Reeves

My friend Bethany Patience started Run Your Tongue in 2012 in Kettering, but it was rather short-lived after we both moved away. I then spent six months in Paris, where I began performing at a spoken word night. When I returned home, I missed performing regularly and decided to start RYT back up in Kettering, following a similar format to the night in France. We moved to the Three Cocks Inn, which was home to us for over five years. We had some great nights there with headliners such as Atilla the Stockbroker, Jess Green and Jonah Matranga.  

During the lockdowns of 2020, I began to hold Run Your Tongue online, which allowed me to connect with poets from all over the world. When we were able to have live events again, I asked Rosa Fernandez to become my co-host, and we moved to an art gallery in Leicester for a year before settling at our current home at Watson’s Cocktail Bar on Granby Street, Leicester. We’ve welcomed a couple of poets we met during the online Zoom days to headline in real life: Jeff Cottrill all the way from Canada and Clive Oseman all the way from Swindon.

The Leicester poetry scene is really thriving, and there are some great other nights, each with its own flavour. Word! is the most well-known and longest-running, Some-Antics is a really fun and popular night, and Get Mouthy is a great new night at the Big Difference. In fact, last month, Word! invited a host from each of the other nights to headline at their event. The whole scene is really supportive and collaborative. We try to make sure our events don’t clash, and we always try to support each other’s events when we can.  

We try to make RYT welcoming and don’t take ourselves too seriously, which I hope helps people feel at ease. I know how hard it is to get up and perform – I used to be absolutely terrified of public speaking and would avoid it at all costs, so I know that just getting up on stage is a win. I always say that anything goes at our events as long as it involves words. While most performers read and perform poetry, we also welcome comedians, singer-songwriters and storytellers. It’s a great place to try out new material to a welcoming crowd.

I always wanted to keep RYT accessible to all, so it’s always been pay-as-you-feel. However, we still believe in paying our headliners, especially if they have come from further afield. Everything we take on the door goes to them, and we also hold the world-famous Rob’s Raffle in the hope of raising a little more. Sometimes it’s difficult to balance paying our headliners with making the night accessible to everyone, but we somehow have made it work for over a decade.

Our events are usually on the first Thursday of the month, but we are holding them bi-monthly until the end of the year. We have an extra event in October with Cathi Rae, and there might even be a special event in the summer.  

The night has taken many forms over the years in various venues, and even when it takes a break for a while, it always returns. I’m really proud of the night, and I know that as long as people keep coming down, I’ll keep putting it on.   

If you’d like to stay updated with events, please follow our Instagram and Facebook pages. Our next event is with Ciarán Hodgers on Thursday, July 4th. 

About the author
Rob Reeves is a poet and musician based in Leicester. Rob started writing poetry in 2012 while taking his MA in English at the University of Leicester, where he is now studying for his PhD in Creative Writing.

Rosa Fernandez, "Bite Me"

Rosa Fernandez, photograph by Kulvir Bhambra

Rosa Fernandez is a spoken word artist, musician and and two-time Word! Slam winner who has performed at venues and festivals across the UK and been published in the UK (various anthologies, Bite Me pamphlet by Bookishly) and Canada (Untethered magazine). With a degree from Goldsmiths College in English Literature, followed by a few years of nearly being famous as a pop star, Rosa has at least fifteen years of experience in editing, proofreading and publishing every kind of art form, running a blog of reviews of films, Netflix series, art exhibitions and poetry collections.

Rosa has performed in various guises at numerous venues nationwide, from singing songs from films in a burlesque showcase to writing and performing monologues, from headlining festivals and starring in a music video to performing stand up and hosting poetry nights dressed in ridiculous costumes; she brings her unique perspective, gentle whimsy and firm sense of socialist feminist justice to every performance. Otherwise, she can often be found wearing a hat and thinking about biscuits. Her poems have toured the nation in the back of a transit van, and it sometimes sounds like it.

Rosa’s upcoming poetry performances include co-hosting RunYour Tongue at the Exchange on Wednesday 23 November, a feature performance at Word! Slam at the Attenborough Arts Centre on Thursday 24 November and a feature performance at a fundraising event for Save Weekley Hall Wood on Friday 25 November at Kettering Arts Centre. Rosa will also be performing poetry and songs at the Clarendon Park Christmas Fair on Queen’s Road on Sunday 4 December, and would be delighted to see you at any of these events, particularly if you want to buy her pamphlet or haiku zines as excellent Christmas gifts!

 

About Bite Me, by Rosa Fernandez

Food is so much more than just fuel; it is opinion, memory, trigger, treat, and is at times just funny all by itself.

In this tasty selection box, Rosa Fernandez celebrates all the things we might consume and why, whether toast will actually kill you, and why the kitchen is the best place in the house. Crumbs!

You can read more about Bite Me on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read  a sample poem from the collection.  

From Bite Me

Choke

I left all your words in.
You piled them all up
Into the imaginary;
You needed somewhere
Where they could disappear.
 
Shoved under the stairs
The words are dusty,
Fading, crumbling;
I put one in my mouth
Occasionally, for fun.

Loz Anstey, "Orange from Grey"

 

Loz Anstey is a spoken word artist, a speaker of life, humour, identity, mental health and connection.

Writing became her go-to solace from around the age of 10 years old and she has been scribbling and tapping away ever since. After obtaining a dual honours degree in English Language and Creative Writing, she was exposed to the spoken word scene at her local pub and was launched into the world of performance. The buzz of a stage has now taken her to perform across the country.

In recent years, Loz had her audio piece Boxes released on BBC Sounds and she performed a piece dedicated to her late sister, Emma, on the TEDx stage - a performance that reached out to those in need of some bravery to reach out themselves.

From the heart-warming advocacy of mental health to the downright silly and ridiculous, Loz’s writing has the ability to take you through an emotional and uplifting journey of life’s truths, giggles and battles.

About Orange from Grey

Orange from Grey is a collection of poetry that has been stacking up over the last few years. Many are popular performance poems that have been following Loz from gig to gig. From the very early ‘Pam’s Pants’ to the more recent of ‘Come at me,’ Orange from Grey has gathered them all in one place. There are also poems much more suited to the page, that have never been performed. Orange from Grey is wave of emotions from silly to loss, to hard hitting and humorous. Loz’s publisher said it best with: ‘This is the book of the film.’

Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From Orange from Grey, by Loz Anstey    

Cathi Rae, "Your Cleaner Hates You and Other Poems"

Congratulations to MA Creative Writing student Cathi Rae, whose debut poetry pamphlet, Your Cleaner Hates You and Other Poems, has recently been published by Soulful Publishing. Here, you can read about her work and book. 

Cathi Rae has been described as an exciting emerging voice on the spoken-word scene. Joelle Taylor says she is "a contemporary spoken-word icon" and Lydia Towsey describes her work as "clear eyed, detailed, beautiful and necessary."

Cathi is a multiple slam competition winner and has performed extensively in pubs, poetry events and festivals.

After a very long career working with teenagers at risk of exclusion from education, she now pays the bills by cleaning other people's houses and has the head space finally to focus on her writing and performing career.

She is currently completing an MA in creative writing at Leicester University and working on her second collection.

Your Cleaner Hates You and Other Poems is Cathi Rae's debut collection, published by Soulful Publishing.

The work covers a four-year period and includes work originally devised as spoken-word pieces and more traditional page poetry.


The work aims to be quietly nuanced and use every day accessible language to create poetry for both experienced readers of contemporary poetry and for those who have never considered reading poetry.

Featured below is one of the poems from the collection.


There is more to your cleaner than meets the eye ...

This one gets up at five
Runs as fast and far as heart and lungs can bear
Revels in the recognition from other early morning pavement pounders
And then puts on the uniform of tabard
Bleach stained leggings 
Becomes invisible again 

This one knows the name of every star that's in the sky
And more than that
Can tell you why they are so named
But
Has spent so long on hands and knees 
She fears she may have lost the knack
Of looking up

This one's boyfriend is banged up again 
Working double shifts
She curated a collection of childcare
So complicated
Tenuous
That in a gallery 
It would be labelled
Web
Or DNA of every day

That one says she's lucky
In a refugee camp far away
At fifteen
Sixteen
The soldiers said she was too old to rape
So
Mostly
She was left alone

This one speaks five languages 
So
Knows exactly what your husband and his mates 
Make of her arse
When she bends down
To scrub your skirting boards
Laser jets from lowered lids
If looks could kill

This one holds a broken bird
A touch so light 
It's if her hands were wings 
And not these red and swollen things 
Fingerprints burnt off with bleach 
Convenient 
She always thinks
Should she start a new career
As master thief

And this one 
This one's writing poetry 
Verse as vicious as vipers 
Mouth so acidic 
It makes diamonds bleed
This one's writing poetry
There is more to your cleaner than you will ever see.

Lydia Towsey, "The English Disease"

Lydia Towsey is a poet, performer, cat keeper, mother and ukulele strummer – with an MA in Creative Writing and a primary school certificate in "tap dancing." Previously shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize, she’s spoken and performed everywhere from London’s 100 Club, Roundhouse and the House of Lords, to "On the Buses," with Literary Leicester and Arriva (bus company).

Commissioned by the Guardian, Royal Albert Hall, Kew Gardens, Apples and Snakes, Poet in the City and more, Lydia has UK toured three shows, funded by Arts Council England. In 2018 she was one of the artists listed for the Outspoken London Prize for Poetry in Film and in the UK Saboteur Awards for Best Show (The Venus Papers) and for Best Spoken Word Performer.

In addition to her practice as a writer and performer, Lydia works for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and is the Artistic Director of WORD! – a poetry organisation delivering one of the longest running poetry nights in the UK.

Widely published in journals and anthologies (with Bloodaxe Books, Candlestick Press, Five Leaves and others) her debut collection, The Venus Papers, was published by Burning Eye Books in 2015. The English Disease is her second collection. 

The English Disease (Burning Eye, 2019)

"The English Disease" has been coined as a term to describe everything from missed penalties and vitamin D deficiency, to no sex please, tea and rickets. Exploring contemporary world events, including the international migration crisis and the British EU Referendum, alongside the lived experience of becoming a mother in a year of celebrity death and continental fracture, this collection examines the condition afresh.

With zombies, cats, Bowie, break-ups and the weather; eating disorders, buses, Beatrix Potter, queueing, nature, war and nursery rhymes, The English Disease draws upon class, colonialism and other undead matters to explore identity at a time of now … apocalypse?

“This book is a new national anthem. Visual, vivid, curious and kind” (Joelle Taylor).

You can see a trailer about the book here. 

And below is a poem from the collection: 


Love Poem to a Zombie Government

You – are my sugar lump,
my spark in the dark, prairie flower,
swamp duck, blue cheese,
break-in-the-clouds, apocalypse breeze. 

You’re my Sunday, Monday, Tuesday week
at the knees and in the feet.
Last night I dreamt you tried to kill me.

You’re my chickadee,
sweet pea, sweetheart, honey,
baby, darling, kick 
the bucket.

My sun, my moon, my stars, my rain,
baby; last night I dreamt you tried to kill me, again.

The Angel of Welford Road

Last week, the MA Creative Writing students went on a field trip to Welford Road Cemetery. Lauren Foster took these photos of a headless angel in the cemetery:

 Photo by Lauren Foster

Photo by Lauren Foster

Subsequently, Lauren wrote a spoken-word poem, "The Angel of Welford Road," which you can listen to here.