Artwork designed and created by Nick Hand

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT

Following the success of our sold out evening at the Horse Hospital last month, we’re delighted to announce that we’re teaming up with our Scottish brothers and sisters Neu! Reekie! to put on their first ever London event.

Where Are We Now? takes place on Wednesday 26th April at Caught by the River’s spiritual clubhouse, The Social, 5 Little Portland Street, London W1. Doors open at 7pm; tickets are £8 in advance and can be bought here.

Find herein the Neu! Reekie! Where Are We Now? manifesto:

The UK has reached a crossroads. Where it goes next is anyone’s guess. Dark divisive forces of racism and prejudice are stirring across the UK (and Europe) in the wake of Brexit and across the Atlantic following the election of Donald Trump. We need to ask our artists, musicians & writers where they stand.

Come together. Ask questions. Listen & watch. Dance. Shake things up. This is where we’re at.

SALENA GODDEN
Author of literary memoir Springfield Road and poetry books Fishing In The Aftermath and Under The Pier, Salena Godden is one of Britain’s foremost poets and a regular headliner at literary and music festivals, nationally and internationally. A regular guest on numerous BBC programmes, most recently a performance of her poem ‘Titanic’ was aired in BBC poetry programme We Belong Here throughout 2016. Her short-fiction Blue Cornflowers was shortlisted for the Guardian short story prize 2016. In January 2017 Salena Godden received a Golden Hammer at The Royal Albert Hall at the UK National Slam for services to poetry.

Her live spoken word album LIVEwire features twenty pieces, showcasing a wide broad range of her work. It has attracted 5 star rave reviews since its launch with indie poetry label Nymphs and Thugs, and has just seen Salena shortlisted for the 2016 Ted Hughes Award. Salena’s essay ‘Shade’ was published in 2016’s literary sensation The Good Immigrant, championed by JK Rowling and crowdfunded and published with Unbound. Salena Godden’s latest book is being kept under wraps but will debut with a reading and performance on June 1st 2017 at The Roundhouse in London, as part of The Last Word Festival. “She is everything the Daily Mail is terrified of”, says Kerrang Magazine.

HOLLIE MCNISH
Hollie McNish is a poet and spoken word artist who straddles the boundaries between the literary, poetic and pop scenes. A UK Slam Champion and Winner of the Arts Foundation Fellowship in Spoken Word, Hollie’s online videos have repeatedly gone viral (with 4 million views and counting). She has garnered titles like ‘chick of the week’ (MTV), ‘internet sensation’ (Best Daily), and poet Benjamin Zephaniah stated ‘I can’t take my ears off her’. Other fans include Pink, Kate Tempest (with whom Hollie regularly collaborates/performs), Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Ross. She was the first poet to record an album in Abbey Road Studios. Hollie has toured internationally, performed in venues as diverse as Glastonbury Festival, The Royal Albert Hall, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Bar, Southbank Centre and Cambridge University. Her poems have appeared on Radio 4, XFM, MTV, Channel 4, BBC 1, BBC 2, Dazed, The Guardian and beyond. She recently had her poems scored by a national orchestra. Her poetry/journal Nobody Told Me took the UK by storm in 2016, and has earned her a place on the shortlist for the 2016 Ted Hughes Award. June 2017 sees Picador publish her third collection, entitled Plum.

CHESTER P
Chester P is a rapper and was a founding member of Task Force, Bury Crew and the M.U.D. Family. Noted for his style of psychedelic poetry, Chester P has built a collection of underground classics, from the Music From The Corner series to his 2007 LP From The Ashes. He touches on many subjects: life on the streets of north London, mythology, politics, poetry and more.

STANLEY ODD (acoustic)
Stanley Odd are a 6-piece live hip-hop band with members from Germany, Norway and across Scotland. Champions of Oddness and outsiderdom, you’d be hard pushed to find a festival or stage they haven’t appeared on and demolished over the last few of years, performing extensively throughout the UK and around the globe.

Their second studio album Reject was shortlisted for Scottish Album of the Year 2013 and third album, A Thing Brand New, was placed at No.2 in the Herald’s Best Scottish Albums of 2014.

Stanley Odd were also the recipients of the 2013 Scottish Music Awards’ Big Apple Award.
This is music for people that get tongue-tied talking to girls; clumsy people that dance awkwardly in their bedrooms; people that are generally uncomfortable in social situations; those for whom fashion-sense is an oxymoron; avid readers of science fiction and comic books; girls who drink tonic wine; anyone who prefers literary figures to viewing figures; disciples and architects of counter-culture. Stay Odd.

MICHAEL PEDERSEN
Co-Founder & Co-Artistic Director of Neu! Reekie!, Michael Pedersen is a Robert Louis Stevenson Award winner; a John Mathers Trust Rising Star of Literature Award winner; a Canongate Future 40; a Callum McDonald Memorial award finalist; and many more things. He’s read poetry all over the globe (New York to Tokyo, Malawi to Mull) and is published by revered Scottish publisher Polygon books – with fans ranging from Irvine Welsh to Stephen Fry. A new collection, Oyster, will appear in 2017.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON
Kevin Williamson is Co-Founder & Co-Artistic Director of Neu! Reekie! A previous winner of the Robert Louis Stevenson Award, with one full collection under his belt, his poetry has been published and performed all across Europe, USA, NZ and Tokyo. He has performed on the same bill as Primal Scream and Young Fathers, as well as being a long time collaborator with Irvine Welsh. A nationally-known Robert Burns performer, his one-man Burns show ran at Edinburgh Fringe in 2012 to critical acclaim. He is the founder of the notorious Rebel Inc publishing house and co-founder of Bella Caledonia.

FINITRIBE DJ SET
(Davie Miller DJ set)
Finitribe are a legendary Edinburgh electronic outfit championed by Andrew Weatherall, Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong among others. Their Let The Tribe Grow EP was released in 1986 and featured the now legendary Balearic Club anthem ‘De-Testimony’. Finitribe were now very much ensconced in the acid house movement of 1989, The Second Summer of Love. Detestimony was licensed by Pete Tong for the classic Balearic Beats Vol 1, and to this day it remains a tune that is played out all over the world. Their forthcoming and long-awaited new album Suilven will appear on One Little Indian in 2017.

NEU! REEKIE!
‘Scotland’s favourite avant-garde noisemakers, Neu! Reekie! dismantle the structures and snobberies dividing high and low art – art is for everyone’ (The Skinny). Based in Edinburgh, Neu! Reekie! is literature first with music, film, performance, animation (and everything in between) hot in pursuit. Co-founded and co-run in 2010 by poets Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson, Neu! Reekie! have showcased provocative and pulsing events all over Scotland and internationally; have taken over the likes of National Museum, National Library and National Galleries of Scotland; as well as guest curations for Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Hull City of Culture 2017, Electric Fields Festival & more. Neu! Reekie! have unfurled upon the U.S., Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Malawi, Indonesia and now make their London debut at The Social. Past N!R! guests have included Irvine Welsh, Primal Scream, Young Fathers, Charlotte Church, King Creosote, Jackie Kay, Andrew Weatherall, Mark Cousins and Bill Ryder-Jones.

WILL BURNS
Will Burns is poet-in-residence for Caught by the River. A regular reader of his work at festivals across the country, his marvellous debut pamphlet, published through the prestigious Faber New Poets scheme in 2014, was hailed for its ‘quiet intelligence and subtle ways of seeing’, for a voice that is ‘rough but still tender, solitary, ruminating’. His equally brilliant second pamphlet was published by Clutag in 2016.

MARTHA SPRACKLAND
Martha Sprackland’s debut pamphlet, Glass As Broken Glass, was published in January 2017 with Rack Press. Martha was twice a winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award and received an Eric Gregory Award in 2014. Previously founder-editor of Cake magazine and assistant poetry editor for Faber, she is currently an idle larkabout (finishing a first collection) and, with Will Burns, is poet-in-residence for Caught by the River.