Skint & Demoralised and Byron Vincent are the latest acts to be confirmed for Phrased & Confused’s festival tent at the Summer Sundae Weekender (August 14-16).

Byron is your perfect festival poet.  Not only does he look as if he’s fallen out of the Arctic Monkeys’ tour bus, his poems and performances contain just the right mix of self-deprecating humour and poignancy.

Meanwhile, Skint & Demoralised blend with seemingly effortless ease John Cooper Clarke-inspired poetry with Beach Boys pop sensibilities to joyous effect.  Enjoy!

After working through some 75 proposals from poets around the country, we’re really pleased to announce that we’ve commissioned Joshua Idehen, Sifundo & Jamal Msebele, Hannah Silva & Alexis Kirke and Sound of Rum to create new material for the Phrased & Confused stage at Summer Sundae Weekender (14-16 August 2009).   Find out more about them and their work here.

Yay! We’re excited to be heading back to Leicester’s finest music festival this August, where we’ll be pitching our tent and dishing up our signature blend of poems, songs, conversations and the not-to-be missed Fridge Poetry. Oh yes.

So what delights do we have in store for you this year? So far the line-up includes Beth Jean Houghtons, Woodpigeon, Jeremy Warmsley, Joshua Idehen, Inua Ellams, Sound of Rum, Francesca Beard, Salena Godden, Ross Sutherland, Tamsin Kendrick, Stephanie Leal and John Osborne. More programming announcements to come, including our new commissions but it’s already shaping up to be one of our best-ever line-ups!

Check out the full details here.

We’re really excited to be able to commission four spoken word artists to create new material for this year’s Summer Sundae Weekender in Leicester (thank you Arts Council England!) Each commission is worth £1000.

We’re looking for new work which responds to the question, Which Came First, The Music or the Words? and which will appeal to a music festival audience. The festival takes place between the 14th and 16th August and the deadline for applications is the 22nd May. If you’re interested in applying you can check out the full application details.

Phrased and Confused is off on tour again in May 2009, taking our irresistibly playful offer of spoken word and lyrical music to venues in Bracknell, London, Norwich, Derby, Stockton and Exeter.

Vying for the best seat on the tour bus will be: Woodpigeon, Canada’s ‘most unjustly overlooked band’ according to The Guardian; the playfully satirical poet Murray Lachlan Young; the root-you-to-the-spot-because-her-words-are-so-honest poet, Aoife Mannix, and the her equally spell-binding musical counterpart, Janie Armour, and – definitely claiming the back seat for their sheer exuberance and passion for all manner of spoken words – Mark Grist and MC Mixy.

For more information, visit the Phrased and Confused Tour 2009 page.

After some nerves of steel negotiations, and much mopping of the collective Phrased & Confused brow, we’re pleased to say that we can now announce the final Phrased & Confused festival line up. Welcome then to our line up the brilliant Ben Mellor, whose Television Will Not Be Revolutionised is one of our favourite poems, and the rousing Excentral Tempest, whose gutsy performances and messages make her the darling of hiphop heads and the literati alike. Click here for a full festival line up.

Hold on to your pens as I tell you that in the run up to this year’s event, we’re looking to commission four spoken word artists interested in creating and performing new work for our latest Phrased & Confused outing – the Phrased & Confused Tent at the Summer Sundae Weekender, a cracking festival which takes place in Leicester 8-10 August.

Each commission is worth £1000 and in addition you’ll receive a weekend pass for you and a guest, camping space in the artist field and travel expenses to and from the festival. Artists we commission will be asked to create at least 15 minutes of new material, and to perform it at least once at the festival.

The deadline for applications is the 11th June and to find out more you can either check out the commissions page, or download a copy of the commissions brief here as a pdf or rtf. Good luck!

Readers, writers, musicians and monstrosities, we are pleased to announce the return of Phrased & Confused. Yes, we’re back once more to explore the creative common ground between music and the lyrics. This year however, things are going to be slightly different. We’re not talking one off gigs, we’re not taking tours, we are however talking a stonking great festival tent. Well, ok, a really exciting, boutique festival tent.

That’s right, this summer we’ve been invited to take over a stage at the award winning Summer Sundae Weekender festival, which for three days (8th – 10th August 2008) takes over De Montfort Hall and Gardens in Leicester.

So far, we’ve got confirmations from Fife based electronic/acoustic folk demon Kenny Anderson (King Creosote) and Emma Pollock (founder member of the Delgados) who will be performing a very special joint set. We’ve also got the Leaf Label’s latest (and greatest) signing, Essie Jain, from the UK via NYC with her serenely beautiful vocals and charming melodies. Not to mention the univocalists themselves, the Oulipo Poets, featuring lyrical pioneers Ross Sutherland, Joe Dunthorne and Tim Clare.

But for something really new and exciting, you’re going to have to wait. Only until Monday, 19th May but it’ll be worth it. So for a one off opportunity for poets, musicians and everyone in between, I urge you to return to this site first thing next week. Really wish we could say more.