Niall O'Sullivan – Poet

Hello all, just a quick heads up to let you know that I will be doing my thing in an extended set on Wednesday. The show is at the Boileroom in Guildford and the night is called “Blank Verse”. Because this is the first in the series, with Byron Vincent, Luke Wright and Dockers MC to come, Wednesday’s gig will be free, so that all the locals can get a gratis night of spoken word and to give them a taste of the joys to come that will only cost them a mere £5.

I’m really looking forward to this one, I like performing outside of London, you get a different kind of audience and more of a chance to be yourself. I for one love reading for longer sets of an hour or so, I get to really shift into my own gear and work up a real rapport with the audience. All my best sets have been extended sets.

For some reason though, extended sets are a rare thing in London, they tend to get handed out to big, well established mainstream poets, but otherwise the idea of a one hour set is usually accompanied with the necessary pre-requisite of an Arts Council application, working with a mentor/director and tightly scripting a one person show that involves a typical autobiographical “how I overcame a particular problem” type slant. Hey, many good shows have come from the aforementioned technique, but there are plenty of poets that could deliver a fantastic, seat of the pants reading based on lots of work. A whole lot of poets have written reams of good work and have enough stage experience to pull this off no problem. So come on London promoters, and I include myself in this bit of finger pointing, let’s start trusting our acts a little more and give them a meatier set to play with.

I have read for an hour in venues around the country for years as well as in Berlin and Norway. I’ve heard stories from Roger Robinson and Nii Parkes about how they anded up reading for over two hours to rapt audiences in Poland. At the Royal Festival Hall I watched Henry Rollins kick arse for nearly three hours of spoken word last Friday. I think the London circuit could stage some unforgettable extended sets in the years to come. I guess I should practice what I preach though, so keep an eye on how I book the Cellar in the year to come.

Actually, I did read one extended set in London, well, within the six travel zones anyway. It was a one hour reading for the Bexley Library Volunteers Christmas party. Most of the audience were over sixty. It was a great gig! You can listen to the whole thing on the audio page of this site.

Anyway, rant over, hope to see you in Guildford. It’s going to rock in a way that all these London 15-20 minute portions can only aspire to.