Award-winning musician and Radio 6 DJ Cerys Matthews invites Leonie Evans, Malika Booker and Hannah Lowe to join her in exploring the lyrical response to times of trouble and change within the sphere of poetry and blues music. Expect spell-binding lyrical excerpts from Langston Hughes, Bessie Smith, Edward Thomas and some ancient bards, as well as musical performances of songs that have so long moved and inspired.

After the event, please join us for Benin City – all Cerys Matthews & Friends ticket holders will save 20%.

Cerys Matthews MBE is a musician, author and festival owner: The Good Life Experience. She writes and presents documentaries for radio and television on subjects as diverse as Cuba, Psalms, Blues music, shark fishing and rugby and regularly DJs on BBC World Service, BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music where she programmes and hosts an award winning weekly show. Cerys was the founder member of multi-million selling band Catatonia with a solo career leading her to duet with Tom Jones, David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards and Larry Adler. Cerys is Vice President for Shelter and the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts, and is patron of the Dylan Thomas Society and Ballet Cymru. Her sing-a-long book Hook, Line and Singer published by Penguin in 2013 was a Sunday Times bestseller.

Malika Booker is an international writer whose work is steeped in anthropological research methodology and rooted in storytelling. Her writing spans poetry, theatre, monologue, installation, and education. Clients and organisations she has worked with include Arts Council England, BBC, British Council, Wellcome Trust, National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Arvon, and Hampton Court Palace.

Hannah Lowe is a poet and researcher. Her first poetry collection Chick (Bloodaxe, 2013) won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection. She has also published three chapbooks: The Hitcher (Rialto 2012); R x (sine wave peak) 2013); and Ormonde (Hercules Editions 2014) and a family memoir Long Time No See (Periscope, 2015). She teaches Creative Writing at Brunel University and is the current poet in residence at Keats House.

Leonie Evans is a peripatetic multi instrumentalist who’s been playing music since the age of 5 and has performed across the world with hundreds of musicians. She composes her own music which is in a mixture of genres and languages. She’s currently working on the second volume of her Collaborations project. Another big part of Leonie ’s life is that she spends a quarter of every year living in New Orleans where she’s nourished her love and knowledge for old jazz, blues, country and gospel.