The Keen and Other Stories

Part of Middlesbrough Storytelling Festival.

Featured artists + selected 1-poem per person open mic.

The Keen By Carmen Marcus

Maeve is Donegal's last and worst Keening woman. She has one job! To sing the souls of the departed from here to the Other Side. But she can't because - well it's complicated. And now there's a queue of the dead waiting in the back room of The Crossroads bar and they're not happy about it. Expect ghosts, dark humour and a hot priest.

Folkish by Kym Deyn

Folkish is a trickster figure masquerading as a poetry collection. Full of ghosts, worms, saints, and Northern English folklore, Kym Deyn’s debut is playful, spirited and absolutely furious – moving between the alive, the legendary, and the haunted in endlessly inventive forms. Queer and disconcerting, Kym Deyn’s debut is chock-full with poems which tear at both the heart and the guts. They inhabit a world where dark eyes scour graveyards for breakfast and saints are as likely to spit as to pray. This is poetry as hauntology, where England’s North is alive with untrustworthy and beguiling pasts, presents, and futures.

The Classic Monster by Audrey Cook

Audrey Cook is a queer, non-binary performance maker and writer from Teesside, known for their camp, cult, and surreal style of storytelling. Witness the start of a work in progress project telling local stories with inspiration from hammer horrors and creature features.

Stories from the North by Lizzie Lovejoy

Gobby Lass, Lizzie Lovejoy is a Tees Valley born Poet, Performer and Picture-Maker. They've spent their life listening to peoples words, and now Lizzie translates local narratives into creative works, like these tales from home and the people who make it what it is.

Stories in Stone by Fran Edwards

Let Fran lead you through the headstones of Redcar Cemetary, and the stories they can tell.

Plus a curated 5-slot open mic, one poem per person, all poems to tell a story - to request a slot please email your poem to [email protected]

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Tees Women Poets