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THE JIZZ SHOW PRESS RELEASE


With support from Arts Council England, John developed a pilot show based on the poems in Jizz—his New and Selected Poems from Kingston University Press. It was very much a team effort, working with musical collaborator Helen Lunt (on cello, flute and keyboard), with artistic advisor Chris Fogg and two groups of dancers.

The show was staged at two pilot events—one at Strode Theatre in Street, (near Glastonbury in Somerset) where Helen lives (on Thursday 21 September 2017) and the second in Brighton (where John lives) on Friday 6 October.

This is the press release for the Brighton event.


MEDIA RELEASE—FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION
 
Jizz is coming! Words, music and dance in a poetic collaboration at St. George’s, Kemptown, Brighton on Friday 6 October 2017
 
Brighton based poet John Davies (aka Shedman) and local dancers Harriet Morris and Rosa Firbank join musician Helen Lunt in the premiere of JIZZ, the new show at St. George’s, Kemptown, Brighton on Friday 6 October. Written and performed by writer and poet John Davies, Jizz starts at 8pm and runs for about an hour and a half with an interval. After the interval American poet Kate Gale, poet Ciaran O’Driscoll and musician Margaret Farrelly from Ireland, and local singer songwriter Pete Howells complete the line up.
The audience is invited to join the performers for drinks in the bar afterwards.
 
What’s it all about?
It’s a very different and enjoyable night out - enchanting, entertaining, family friendly and fun! John Davies (who’s better known as Shedman) and musician Helen Lunt (cello, flute, keyboard) mingle wry humour with telling feeling and perceptive focus, accompanied by captivating dance and movement from Harriet and Rosa.

Jizz is a bird’s eye view on life that’s both touching and playful. It’s a whizz round life’s big events and little foibles, a quick flutter through beginnings and endings – and all kinds of birds! These are snapshots of a life lived, delights and griefs, moments of drama or comedy, insights behind the world we take for granted or gratitude for the fact we can.

Although it has other meanings too, Jizz is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as the ‘characteristic impression given by a particular species’ and in his poetry John Davies aims to capture the jizz of a particular moment or experience, the variegation, zest, piquancy and poignancy of life itself.
 
Jizz—words, music, movement
John Davies says: “The poems in tonight’s show are all taken from Jizz, my New and selected poems to be published by Kingston University Press in the UK and Red Hen Press in the USA. The poems move from birth to death—from ‘sperm to worm’ as they say in the insurance business—and tonight’s show follows a similar arc. The jizz and fizz of life is in each poem.”
 
“These moments are intensified by Helen Lunt’s accomplished improvisations and recitals, musical punctuations and melodies, on cello, keyboard and flute, weaving words and music into an aural textile. And Harriet Morris and Rosa Firbank bring the exhilaration of movement in a three dimensional space to lead the collaboration of words and music to dance.”
 
John Davies performs his poems from memory with Helen Lunt providing a musical commentary. Helen plays solo pieces as well as weaving her music with John’s words. Dancers Harriet Morris and Rosa Firbank who studied at Chichester University provide accompanying dynamic movement.
 
“It has been great to be a part of a project which brings such life to the theatre space,” says Harriet. “The collaboration between spoken word, music and movement has been organically woven together allowing John and the artistic advisor Chris Fogg to lead us to produce a performance which is layered and unique. It has been a pleasure to be involved.”
 
Guest performers
Kate Gale from the USA first performed to a sell-out audience in Brighton in 2003. Her poems are robust and very sexy, with a strong appeal for women, tackling all kinds of issues concerned with LGBT and feminism. “I’m delighted to be reading again in Brighton, where you have a really vibrant poetry scene, including the regular Pighog night,’ she says. “I’m also Editor of Red Hen Press who will be publishing John’s new collection in the USA. We took over the list of Brighton based publisher Pighog Press in 2015.”
 
Ciaran O’Driscoll is one of Ireland’s leading poets. He has had a long connection with Brighton, through the longstanding connection between the poetry festivals in Brighton and Limerick which he originated with John Davies. His poetry always gets a tremendous response from young and old alike. He has a wonderful way with audiences and many of his poems are very humorous and entertaining.
 
Margaret Farrelly will be playing some traditional Irish music and local musician Pete Howells will be showcasing a couple of tracks from his new album Dead Cat Bounce.
 
All in all Jizz offers a very enjoyable night out. There will be a pay bar and plenty of time after the event for discussion and networking.  
 
“John Davies handles the ironic and the comic with exceptional ease and poise. A joyous affirmation of life’s essential cycle.” —SUDEEP SEN
 
“Helen Lunt is that extraordinary combination of mind, heart, spirit and creativity rarely found in the realm of music.” —JOHN SHARP
 
 
 
Jizz—words, music, movement
8.00 pm (Doors 7.15 pm)
FRIDAY 6 OCTOBER
St George’s Church, St George’s Road
Kemptown, Brighton BN2 1ED
 

Profiles

 
John Davies
Born and raised in Birmingham, John has lived in Brighton since 1988.
 
His work has been published in two pamphlet collection, a full collection Shedman, as well as his forthcoming New and Selected Poems, Jizz. With artist Sue Ridge he also co-wrote the
 
His work has been published in The Guardian, The Irish Examiner, The Echo Room, Poetry South East and azul, amongst others, as well as in two pamphlet collections and the full collection Shedman. He was the first non-Irish editor of The Stony Thursday Book, an annual anthology of contemporary poetry published in Ireland. The poems in tonight’s show are all taken from Jizz—New & Selected Poems, published by Kingston University Press.
 
John is perhaps best known as his poetic alter ego, Shedman, (www.shedman.net) the original itinerant poet in a shed who has appeared at numerous festivals and events. As Shedman his commissioned work has included poems engraved into the windows of a learning centre on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, major hospital projects with visual artist Sue Ridge, and a poem about the Forest Ridge for the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, emulating Michael Drayton’s alexandrines in his Poly-Olbion.
 
 
Helen Lunt
After graduating from Westminster College, Oxford, Helen began her career teaching Music and Maths in a comprehensive School in Inner City Birmingham in the early 70s. During this time, she studied externally at the Royal College of Music gaining an ARCM, and then went on to specialise in Cello Teaching. She took a Peripatetic Teaching Post with Birmingham Music Service, for many years, before Somerset Music Service beckoned, and then Downside School, near Bath. During this time, she added flute to her portfolio, getting to grade 8 (classical).
 
After several years of combining this with Freelance Cello Playing, she chose to go back to University and train as a Music Therapist at Bristol University, in the early 90s. Working in the field of Autism and Mental Health, she has been working for Soundwell Music Therapy Trust (the only Music Therapy Trust specialising in Adult Mental Health in the UK). This she combines with a freelance career, playing in opera, oratorio, string quartet and film music as well as solo cello, for funerals, weddings and functions.
 
She now teaches cello, piano and flute (classical and jazz) in her studio at home. When not doing music she relaxes by daily early morning swimming in the local pool or dusktime starling murmuration watching on the Somerset Levels. Helen’s cello is French, a Thierry, crafted in 1898.

Rosa Firbank
Rosa is an independent dance artist from Brighton. She graduated with a BA (1st class honours) in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. As a freelance performer she has worked with Sivan Rubinstein (SAMBA AND TEARS) Lizzi Kew Ross, Yael Flexer, Tony Thatcher and Marina Collard (The Kronos Quartet), Pickett Improv (Score 10), Tick Tock Bridget and visual artist Barbara Loftus. She is an active member of the Swallowsfeet Collective and associate producer of Swallowsfeet Festival (Brighton, UK). As a dance maker and curator she is passionate about creating live experiential and distinctive performance for diverse audiences.
 
Harriet Morris
Harriet trained at Roehampton University and then was part of the graduate company Mapdance, where she received her Masters in Dance Performance from Chichester University. Whilst part of Mapdance Harriet worked with choreographers: Yael Flexer, Hagit Bar, Gary Clarke, Liz Aggiss and Kerry Nichols. Since then Harriet has worked locally, teaching in Brighton, performing in the Brighton Fringe Festival and being on the curating team for the Brighton Dance Network's Scratch Night. Harriet has also choreographed and performed her own work in Swallowfeet Festival Local Showcase and at Stockholm Fringe Festival.
 
Kate Gale
Dr Kate Gale is co-founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review, and she teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction.
 She is author of seven books of poetry including The Goldilocks Zone from the University of New Mexico Press in 2014, and Echo Light from Red Mountain in 2014 and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis, which had its world premiere October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee.
 
Ciaran O’Driscoll
Ciran O’Driscoll, a member of Aosdána, has published six collections of poetry, including Gog and Magog (Salmon, 1987), his New and Selected Poems, Moving On, Still There (Dedalus, 2001), and Life Monitor (Three Spires Press, 2009, due for re-publication by Red Hen of California in 2018). His work has been translated into many languages. The Old Women of Magione, his fourth collection was published in a dual language edition as Vecchie Donne di Magione by Volumnia Editrice in 2006 and a Selected Poems in Slovene translation, was published in 2013 by Kud France Preseren. In addition he has been represented in many foreign anthologies of Irish poetry. Liverpool University Press published his childhood memoir, A Runner Among Falling Leaves, in 2001. His novel, A Year’s Midnight, was published by Pighog Press in 2012. He has won a number of awards for his work, including the James Joyce Prize and the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.
 
Margaret Farrelly from Limerick plays traditional Irish music on fiddle and tin whistle
 
Pete Howells
Pete Howells is a singer/songwriter and novelist based in Brighton.
His music is lyric-driven, Folk-Rock with Latin and Acoustic-Blues influences.
Originally from Hartlepool, Pete has toured the UK extensively, mainly playing folk clubs, colleges and concert halls with his various bands most notably Household Names and World Service. He’s also supported, artists as diverse as Ian Gillan, John Martyn, Bert Jansch, Julie Felix, Osibisa, Amazulu, Desmond Dekker, Courtney Pine and Brand New Heavies.