Luke Wright And Helen Porter

Luke Wright And Helen Porter
Friday 22nd September, 7.30pm
Main Marquee
£10

Crack out the bunting! It’s Luke Wright’s Silver Jubilee. Over twenty-five years Luke Wright has built up a reputation for being one of Britain’s most popular live poets. He has won an unprecedented four Saboteur Awards (national awards for spoken word), a Stage Award, and a Fringe First. He’s sold out shows across the world and regularly tours with John Cooper Clarke and The Libertines.  This year, thwarted in his attempts to hold a street party by the philistines on the council and unable to shift the over-ordered commemorative plates, Wright does what a poet does best, and takes a deep dive into himself. What follows is his most confessional show to date. 

Wright was adopted as a baby and grew up believing that his adoption “wasn’t a big thing.” But one night he idly stumbled across his birth mother on Facebook. This window to a world that might have been his has thrown up deep questions about privilege, familial love, and destiny.  This show is an excavation of lives lived and not lived. Wright navigates his audience through a warm and honest hour of poems and stand-up with the directness and pathos that has made him one of the most popular live poets in England. With some wild experiments in form, a nervous kitten called Sir John Betjeman and a healthy smattering of drum n bass, Wright manages to navigate some heart-wrenching material and keep the laughs coming.

Alongside Luke we welcome Devon-based jazz duo, Helen Porter (piano and vocals) & James Budden (double bass), heard previously at St Endellion as part of the quartet Misbehavin’. They'll perform their original interpretations of well-known and much loved songs by Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and Hoagy Carmichael among others. Playing a heady mix of up tempo jazz standards and sultry ballads in their own inimitable style, they'll offset Luke's poems to make this an evening to remember.