News has reached Write Out Loud of a spoken word double-act lined up for the Edinburgh Fringe next month. Gary From Leeds and Richard Purnell are performing The Long and the Short of it, with a mission to make poetry accessible to a wider audience. 

This year spoken word has its own section in the Edinburgh Fringe programme for the first time.

Richard Purnell said: “I hate Wordsworth as much as the next right-thinking human being, but poetry doesn’t have to be eye-wateringly boring. We’re in Edinburgh to launch our solution-based, 360° consultancy to show the real need for more people to join the poetry fraternity. And the tongue will be firmly in cheek, so to speak.”

Gary From Leeds added: “We feel like we’re part of a group of pioneers, bravely challenging both audience boundaries and our own fears. Poets have too long been a quiet, self-effacing bunch, so to be allowed to speak words in an official capacity feels like emancipation for all of us. But just come to our show.”

The show is at Edinburgh’s Banshee Labyrinth venue at 1.40pm, from 4-13, 15-19 and 21-25 August. The self-styled “fun-sized Essex boy-man and lanky, dour Yorkshireman” first linked up for a sell-out run at the 2010 Camden fringe. They claim that, as well as Wordsworth, “haughty bastards” like TS Eliot and Philip Larkin are in their sights. That’s fighting talk - if they really mean it.