From BBC’s The Verb – to Write Out Loud!  Wigan’s Louise Fazackerley, who was featured on the BBC Radio 3 programme presented by Ian McMillan last Friday, will be appearing as guest poet at Write Out Loud’s Risk A Verse at the Red and Green Club, Huddersfield, on Thursday 27 November.

Louise’s spot on The Verb was recorded a few days earlier during the BBC’s Free Thinking festival at The Sage, Gateshead.  She read two powerful poems, ‘Daddy’s Boat’, and ‘Weather Report’, part of her ‘Love is a Battlefield’ work which she has been developing this year after being named as one of three New Voices winners.

She said ‘Daddy’s Boat’, about a child’s creation sent to her father on active service in a faraway country - “You ring insecure on an unsecured line” - was “a contrast to the desert and arid conditions of Afghanistan … I write a lot about sand and water.”  

Presenter Ian McMillan introduced Louise – one of those rising stars who started out at the open mic at Write Out Loud Wigan - by saying that “she’s interested in being able to stand your ground on the stage, as well as the page”. He added that he enjoyed hearing her “Wigan voice”, which “reclaimed a lot of rhymes for Wigan … that almost-rhyme, ‘corpse’ and ‘drops’ … that’s a Wigan rhyme that you wouldn’t hear if it was on the page”.

The Write Out Loud open mic night with guest poet Louise Fazackerley on Thursday 27 November is free, and starts at 7.30pm. Compere is Write Out Loud founder Julian Jordon. More details and Map 

PHOTOGRAPH: HOWARD HAIGH