It’s time to get out the bunting as the multi award winning poet celebrates 25 years on the literary frontline.
In this year of coronations and joy what better time to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of Luke Wright’s service to verse?
However, thwarted in his attempts to hold a street party by the philistines on his local council and unable to shift the over-ordered commemorative plates, Wright does what a poet does best, and takes a deep dive into himself and the Britain that raised him. With all-new poems on class, excessive consumption, love and adoption, what follows is his most confessional show to date.
Wright was adopted as a baby and grew up believing that his adoption to be no big thing. Until one night he idly stumbled across his birth mother on Facebook, revealing a window to a world that might have been and deep questions about privilege, familial love, and destiny.
Luke Wright’s Silver Jubilee is an excavation of lives lived and not lived. Luke 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 the land. With assistance from some wild experiments in form, a nervous kitten called Sir John Betjemen and a healthy smattering of drum n’ bass, Luke manages to navigate some heart-wrenching material without ever wallowing.
Luke Wright’s Silver Jubilee previewed at The Laugharne Weekend in March, receiving a standing ovation. Further previews at First Light and Latitude festivals drew the same response. In the spirit of George III, the plan is to spend the final months of his quarter century, touring around his beloved isle, celebrating his own magnificence and consequentially a full UK tour is booking for September 2023 – June 2024.
Luke said: “Previously I’ve written and performed poems about fatherhood and divorce, but this feels much more raw. Throughout the show I’ve been careful to balance the dark with light. Although these poems are about my own experience the stuff they stir up is universal. This is a show about what it means to be someone’s child.“
Flamboyant, political and riotously funny, Luke has an international reputation as a leader of the spoken word scene and as one of the UK’s most riveting spoken word performers. His poems are delivered with dynamism, intensity and charisma. Keenly personal but always inflected with irreverent humour, his poetry is always based on his life and observations – as a poet, a father and a son. He is acknowledged as one of our top poets and one of the principal architects of the now thriving UK spoken word scene. He is the winner of a Fringe First, a Stage Award for acting excellence and three Saboteur Awards, including Best Performer.
Luke Wright’s Silver Jubilee is at The Pleasance Dome, 2-15 August at 14.55
