The first Folk Horror Revival event will be taking place at the British Museum, London on  October 16th 2016, featuring talks, lectures, short films, poetry readings, museum tours and other wyrd and intriguing happenings.

Cult television programmes and films of the 1960s and 70s are inspiring a new generation of poets, writers, artists and musicians with their atmospheric themes of contemporary individuals interacting with a uniquely British world of ancient mythology and magic, often uncanny and unsettling.

This special event will feature lectures, film screenings, performances and gallery tours of featured objects in the Museum’s collection to explore themes of cultural rituals, earth mysteries, psychogeography and folklore. Come along and prepare to be scared!

Ticket details to be announced very shortly.

We are proud to reveal other additions to the line up – see also

Folk Horror Revival: British Museum Otherworldly (First Reveal)

Folk Horror Revival: British Museum Otherworldly (Second Reveal)

Folk Horror Revival: British Museum Otherworldly (Third Reveal)
Folk Horror Revival: British Museum Otherworldly (Fourth Reveal)

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Bob Beagrie (b. 1967) is an award winning poet, playwright, and senior lecturer in creative writing at Teesside University. He has published six collections of poetry, including Huginn & Munnin (Biscuit Publishing 2002), Yoik (Cinnamon Press 2008), The Seer Sung Husband (an epic poem about Old Mother Shipton, Smokestack 2010) and SAMPO: Heading Further North (co-written with Andy Willoughby, Red Squirrel Press 2015). His poetry has been translated into Urdu, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Russian, Danish, Spanish, and Swedish. He is a founding member of the experimental spoken word and poetry collective Project Lono – https://soundcloud.com/projectlono-1 and co director of Ek Zuban Press and Literature Development.

Leasungspell is an epic poem, published by Smokestack Books in February 2016 and is an exploration of North East’s early heritage. It relates the story of an Anglo Saxon monk in 657AD as he travels across the wild and volatile landscape from the monastery on the Hartlepool Headland to Whitby, carrying secret letters from St Hild. On route he describes the route and reasons for travelling, but as with all epics, it is full of digressions and diversions, stories within stories, including an array of myths, folklore and local legends. The work is fictional but based heavily upon historical research and written in a hybrid of Old English, Modern English and Northern Dialect Forms.

Please see http://smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=114

A few quotes of recommendation on the text –
“Here’s a fool’s tale you can trust – a powerful and surprising one. Set out if you will intrepidly with Oswin on the road from Hartlepool to Whitby, dark and dangerous as it was in the year 657. You’ll not be ultimately lost. The world of Leasungspell, envisioned here, gives back to us our own – with all its metaphysical, political and psychological complexity intact. Expect to stumble, though – intrigued, delightedly entangled in the ancient roots of English by the way.”
– Gillian Allnutt

“Leasungspell is a work of sustained visionary imagination the like of which is rarely encountered in contemporary English poetry. Beagrie’s heteroglossic rhapsody (written in an entirely new idiom, a scintillating combination of Old English, modern English and northern dialect forms) is a psycho-geographical paean to the landscapes, languages and peoples of his native Teesside – his temenos and omphalos. The language rings like the clashing of broadswords – this poem must be read out loud – and from that energy and violence, a vivid new world, at once both archaic and strangely contemporary, emerges.”
– Steve Ely

“Astonishing, haunting, ambitious in scale and impressive in reach, Leasungspell is a feast for the imagination.”
– Pippa Little

This live performance of Leasungspell was developed with support from Arts Council England, allowing Beagrie to work with a group of specialist musicians to develop the whole text into an online spoken word audio book with accompanying music and sound effects, and to develop an abridged version for live performance. The musicians are Sara Dennis (folk singer), Peter Lagan (Lutenist), Kev Howard percussion, Dordeseal (Celtic Horn) and throat singing, Stewart Forth percussion and sound effects.

The audio work is available to listen to in its entirety via www.leasungspell.com . The work consists of 8 parts / chapters and lasts 2 hours 30 minutes.

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