Sunday 22nd October, 4-5pm
The Guildhall, Berwick upon Tweed, TD15 1BN
Tickets £5
Last year Alice Robinson (née Burn) and I had a great time – and enjoyed a wonderful reception – at Berwick Literary Festival. It’s a small, friendly, well-run four days of events in an historic setting, and I can highly recommend it. This year they’ve kindly invited us back, to perform a different programme, which will include poems from Two Countries, an excerpt from Sun, and some other brand new locally-based work.
Alice comes from a farm near Holy Island, and plays the Northumbrian Smallpipes. We first met when she was a babe in arms, and I read a poem to her on the touring library van where I was poet in residence for the day. Many years later, in 2009, she was a finalist in BBC Radio 2’s Young Folk Musician of the Year with folk harpist Emily Hoile and performed with North East folk group ‘Folkestra’ in the BBC Folk Prom. Since then, she has been broadcast on radio, including live on BBC Radio3’s ’In Tune’, performed with the Royal Northern Sinfonia quartet as a soloist, and with the Windy Gyle Band at the International Bagpipe Festival in the Czech Republic. She has recently completed an MA and begun a PhD in British Music at Durham University. She tutors at Sage Gateshead and is Northumbrian Piper to the Mayor of Berwick.
Here we are, performing together at the Peregrini Lindisfarne heritage festival in the summer in the newly-restored Old Lifeboat House on Holy Island.
Please come and join us at The Guildhall, Berwick, on Sunday 22nd October, 4-5pm