Promotions
Most recently programmer and promoter of the TalkShow: a magazine on legs. In 2004, Dave was invited by mac, Edgbaston, to develop a different kind of live literature event. TalkShow is a live magazine where interviews and performance sit comfortably side by side, and includes live music, improvisation, audience participation and projection. The starting point for every part of the show is live literature. It ran at mac until 2006, and the show has also toured.
Previous promotions include:
Spouting Forth – the monthly spoken word venue begun while Dave was literature development worker for Sandwell Libraries
Ho Bloody Ho! – together with Simon Pitt, a monthly alternative cabaret and comedy promotion in various large pub rooms in Birmingham.
The Speakeasy – also at mac, Edgbaston, this alternative cabaret mixed poets and puppet shows, ranters and stand up.
Dudley Poetry Centre – a regular monthly venue grew from a local poems and pints night, by way of one off concert performances with artists such as Adrian Mitchell, Adrian Henri, Nigel Mazlyn Jones etc., to one of the earliest promotions of a literary based new variety outside London. Described in an Arts Council annual report as ‘a euphemism for a pub upstairs room’.
Photograph by John Wallace