Headingley LitFest: LitFest 2016 preview

Tuesday 12 January 2016

LitFest 2016 preview - Sankakei

This is one of a series of previews for the coming LitFest, which begins on 29 February and ends on 22 March. Printed brochure is on its way!

Sankakei is a trio featuring poets Amina Alyal, Oz Hardwick and musician Michael Graham. The group formed whilst working with York-based Japanese drumming group Kaminari Taiko, in a dynamic performance of Japanese style words and music built upon the thundering beats of taiko drumming.

In September 2013 the opportunity arose to play inside The Maze, a temporary art installation in Wakefield. Due to space limitations, Amina, Oz and Michael devised a more intimate show, and Sankakei – the name is a contraction of ‘sankakukei,’ the Japanese word for triangle – was born. On an Eastern Breeze is a piece for two voices and the stringed instruments, koto and shamisen. Sankakei have performed it in bars, boats and chapels, as well as in more conventional concert settings. It has been released as a CD (Catchment Recordings), and the poems have been published as Close as Second Skins (IDP, 2015), earning Amina and Oz a place on the shortlist for Best Collaborative Work in the 2015 Saboteur Awards.

Sunday 6 March 3pm

House event Book now with Richard Wilcocks : 0113 225 7397
Free entry, with collection - humanitarian relief for refugees

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LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.