Spoken Word at The Allen Valleys Folk Festival

We're really excited about our Spoken Word events at our festival this year. The programme is:

Friday 25th September: Quillseekers’ Spoken Word and Poetry Evening with Alex Corrin-Tachibana (8:00pm at Emma’s Coffee and Sweets)

Saturday 26th September: Workshop - The craft of storytelling through the exciting world of Young Adult fantasy with Katherine Livesey (2:00pm to 3:00pm at Allendale Youth Ambition)

Sunday 27th September: Performances by Degna Stone and Tahmina Ali (From 12:00 noon in the Session Tent next to Allendale Village Hall)

Here's some more information about our Spoken Word performers and workshop leader:

Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana is author of the Salt poetry bestseller Sing me Down from the Dark. We are all very excited that she will be performing on the Friday night of our festival weekend at the Quillseekers Poetry and Spoken Word event.

This year, Alexandra won the Frome Festival Crysse Morrison Poetry Prize, as well as Verve's February Poem of the Month competition, was placed third, by Mimi Khalvati, in the Kent and Sussex competition, and shortlisted for the Wolves Lit Festival competition. Earlier this year, she was shortlisted for the Forwards Prize for Best Single Written Poem, for her poem, Madam Gout, originally published by Magma.

Katherine Livesey is an author of whimsical fiction living in the historic Northumberland countryside. She was born and raised in the wilds of Lancashire and spent much of her childhood running ragged across the moors or lost in a sea of books.

Katherine takes inspiration from folklore, wild landscapes and the classics of the Fantasy genre, as well as the ever-changing but ever-present natural world that surrounds her home. When not writing, Katherine can usually be found knee-deep in mud walking her two dogs with her partner, baking up a storm in her little country kitchen or watching an old favourite period drama.

Tahmina Ali is a British-Bangladeshi spoken word poet, creative facilitator, and producer whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling, resistance, and social change. Born in Bangladesh and raised in the North East after moving to England with her family in the early nineties, her voice is shaped by dual heritage, working-class northern roots, and the lived realities of navigating identity, diaspora, motherhood, grief, and belonging.

Tahmina has written poetry for as long as she can remember but discovered the spoken word form in her early twenties after co-producing and hosting a small poetry night with her sister at their local community centre

Since then, Tahmina has performed at festivals, theatres, and events across the UK, presented her own radio show, curated creative spaces, delivered workshop programmes, won multiple awards, founded spoken word night Freespill, co-edited Thresholds: Poems by South Asian Women in North East England, and published her debut poetry collection SPOKEN.

Degna Stone is a poet and editor based in northeast England. Their debut collection, Proof of Life on Earth (Nine Arches Press, 2022), follows a string of pamphlets and appearances in major poetry anthologies. A Hawthornden Fellow and Northern Writers’ Award winner, they’ve read at Glastonbury, StAnza International Poetry Festival, and Durham Book Festival amongst others. They are a contributing editor at The Rialto and a co-founder of Butcher's Dog poetry magazine. They also run the Women Poets’ Network for the Rebecca Swift Foundation.