Improvised Music & Spoken Word Workshop

Saturday I went to an improvised music & spoken word workshop (organised by poet Tom Cunliffe at the Open House Pub) with an open mind. When I signed up for it a few months ago I thought it sounded cool to improvise words to music. The reality of it was more than cool.

The Safehouse Collective is a group that meets regularly to improvise music and some of the members are also part of a band called 4thirtythree that play live gigs and record albums - all improvised.

Anything can happen and that's what I love about it. The musicians not only use instruments; they pick up brushes, chairs, glasses - anything in the room - to make sound effects. In the workshop the poets were welcome to join in with any words they felt like using. Some used lines from already existing poems, while others made the words up on the spot.

I got a line in my head "I have ice cream in my head, melting in my ears" literally ten seconds before going on stage and later on while I was tuning into the music "my head was falling off." A liberating feeling as I'm a person who normally learn my poems by heart and keep rehearsing ...