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Front Row: Poetry and performance from Hull's Contains Strong Language festival

27/09/2019

Poetry and performance from Hull's Contains Strong Language festival

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Poetry and performance from Hull's Contains Strong Language festival

Playwrights John Godber and Mark Ravenhill; poets Zena Edwards and Jodie Langford in a Front Row celebrating poetry and performance from Hull's Contains Strong Language festival.

Stig Abell talks to John Godber, one of the most-performed playwrights in the English language and somebody who has been interpreting the city of Hull in his plays for over thirty years, from Bouncers to Up and Under. His latest work This Isn’t Right tells the story of Holly Parker who is rediscovering Hull after three years at University in London. When a young woman disappears her already over-protective Dad goes into over-drive. 

Earlier this year the poet and performer Zena Edwards wore a grass coat to Tate Modern to mark the launch of a movement drawing attention to climate change - Culture Declares An Emergency. For Contains Strong Language she’s performing a newly commissioned piece called Rallying Cry. She'll perform and talk to Stig Abell about putting the joy into the poetry of protest. 

We'll hear a world premiere performance of a Jodie Langford poem specially commissioned by BBC Humberside. She's a rising star of the spoken word scene and one of 12 poets chosen by BBC local radio stations to “challenge the outdated clichés and celebrate all that is regionally distinctive about the North”. 

And playwright Mark Ravenhill on translating Bertholt Brecht's The Mother with original score by Hanns Eisler which will be recorded at the festival for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Maxine Peake plays Pelagea Vlassova, the woman who acts to protect her son from prison and becomes an accidental revolutionary.

Presenter Stig Abell
Producer Olive Clancy

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Poetry and performance from Hull's Contains Strong Language festival

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